Racing In The Street

New Weblog--Still Racing In The Street

2006-09-07T16:42:00.000-04:00

I can't deal with all the hassles that Blogger (and most Google applications) deal out to Mac users. The irony is that Apple just named the Google CEO to its board. Too late--I'm out of here.

Please follow my continuing blogging adventures at Still Racing In The Streets.

NY Times Disses State Fairs, Without Mentioning NY

2006-08-17T12:16:00.000-04:00

The New York Times ran a speculative piece on the decline ofstate fairs across the nation, WITHOUT ONCE MENTIONING OUR OWN N.Y. STATE FAIR!

They mentioned the ones sinking into financial debt in the midwest (Illinois), the ones teetering on the brink of extinction in the west (Nebraska, North Dakota) and even a few that are seemingly in good shape (Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, Georgia and Washington).

Nothing about the Great New York State Fair. Are they embarrassed about living in a state that also celebrates the smell of manure, tractor pulls and all things deep fried? Or are they just so self-absorbed in their own fabulous lives, so amply detailed in myriad soap operas, sit-coms and feture length movies?

“A state fair is not a business,” said Pat Haley, a state representative from Huron, S.D., home to a fair whose preview night is Aug. 30. “A state fair is a social event, much like a family reunion.”

If that is so, most downstate residents do not consider themselves part of our family.

Regular Season Gubernatorial Debates Scheduled

2006-08-17T12:06:00.000-04:00

According to the Albany Times Union blog, there will be two upcoming gubernatorial debates and both of them will be held upstate: one in Ithaca on September 26th and one in Buffalo on October 12th.

The debates are co-hosted by the League of Women Voters and Zogby International (the polling guy based in Utica). The Ithaca debate will unfortunately be broadcast by the same NY1 cable bozos who turned the first "statewide" debate into a NYC debate. The second debate will be broacast on all the state's public television stations.

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS--NY
Kris Benson, Executive Director
518-465-4162 or via FAX: 518-465-0812.
kris@lwvny.org

ZOGBY INTERNATIONAL
901 Broad Street, Utica, New York 13501 USA
Toll Free in the U.S. & Canada 1-877-GO-2-POLL | fax 315.624.0210
Marketing e-mail chad@zogby.com

I Still Hate Math

2006-08-15T10:19:00.000-04:00

Mathematicians believe that a longstanding puzzle about the nature of space and topology, termed Poincaré’s conjecture after the French mathematician that proposed the idea, has been proved correct.

According to the New York Times: "there is a growing feeling, a cautious optimism that they have finally achieved a landmark not just of mathematics, but of human thought."

Great, but why can't I balance my checkbook?

“Thought is only a flash in the middle of a long night, but the flash that means everything.”
--Henri Poincaré

Hollywood Can Save The World

2006-08-11T10:03:00.000-04:00

Who needs six-nation talks that are strained and ineffectual? Who needs incompetent Bush administration diplomats?
Kim Jong Il has written a screenplay.

Send a couple of Hollywood studio executives to Pyongyang and offer him his own production company,"Dear Leader Films", a commitment for a Hollywood remake of the current screenplay and a production deal for three guaranteed upcoming pictures. Let them haggle over percentages of the gross, merchandising and the foreign film rights instead of the possibility of thermonuclear war.

I see Julia Roberts in the title role and Jet Li as a certain plucky Asian head-of-state.

Come on, Major League Baseball screwed up with Fidel Castro's ill-fated pitching tryout. Can't we learn from history?

Bruce Updates Seeger Sessions Album

2006-08-10T09:54:00.000-04:00

Bruce Springsteen is set to release ANOTHER version of the Seeger Sessions album, on October 3rd. The new disc will be dubbed theAmerican Land edition.

For all of those who ran out and bought the original version, what's our incentive to go out and contribute more money to a man who "brings his money in in crates?"

Well, versions of "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live" and "Bring 'Em Home" which were so moving in concert. A new song "American Land" written by Bruce and showed up at the tail end of the American tour. CD versions of "Buffalo Gals" and "How Can I Keep From Singing" that were only on the DVD portion of the original album.

Oh, and the new Disc's video portion has more from the original documentary, a couple of music videos and live footage from the American tour.

Yeah, I'll be down at Sound Garden on October 3rd!

More Born To Run 30th Anniversary Swag

2006-07-28T22:11:00.000-04:00

From Backstreets.com: Springsteen News
The Born to Run 30th anniversary celebration continues, with a magnificent coffee table book from cover photographer Eric Meola due in September. In Born to Run: The Unseen Photos, Meola shares a wealth of images from his 1975 cover session -- more than 100 black and white outtakes, most published here for the first time, in stunning quality. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette News has a piece on the making of the book, including the $50,000 scanner and 350 hours of work for scanning alone. This 12” x 12”, LP-sized hardback will also have Springsteen’s complete lyrics from the album, an introduction by Daniel Wolff (author of 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land), and a foreword from Meola himself to set the scene. The photographer is donating his share of the proceeds to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey.

Resting Up From All This Recuperation

2006-07-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

Vacation's where I wanna be
Party on the beach where the fun is free
We don't need a holiday, it's time to celebrate
'Cause I need a break, I need a vacation

Vitamin C, "Vacation"
(I haven't heard of her either--the song's from a Pokemon movie!)

A week's R & R with the family in Canada. After that I will return to work for the first time since May 12th. The Amazing Adventures Of Clot Boy are officially closed (well, except for the bloodthinners, periodic check-ups, better diet and increased excercise.)

That's right, you read it right. I'm taking a week's vacation to rest up from two and a half months of laying around the house, playing with my doggies, surfing the web, reading several books that had languished on my shelves for eons. Deal with it.

Some Meat Missing From Spitzer v. Suozzi Debate Bone

2006-07-26T15:29:00.000-04:00

There are two environmental issues that both candidates for NYS Governor are barely, if at all, discussing.

1) Agriculture is NY State's number one industry. Why no discussion of the rise of huge factory farms (called CAFO's Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) upstate? These monstrous facilities create massive amounts of animal waste, often contained in unsafe lagoons, Remember all the shit that poured into the Black River near Watertown last year? The Marks Dairy Farm near Lowville spilled 3 million gallons of liquid cow manure into the river. The DEC is not effectively policing these manifestly unstable containment units.

The Friends of Rural New York blog had a disturbing, and as yet, still unanswered thought: the Southern Tier flooding that blocked access to many dairy farms for collection of milk may also have compromised MANY manure containment lagoons.

2) Energy production. While the Con Ed mess in Queens is pointing out the shortcomings of NYC's energy distribution system, the overarching question for downstate residents is their rapidly increasing demand for more power. If, as some estimate, NYC demand for power outstrips the supply, the economic engine of NYC business--high tech, financial etc. will also be compromised. This is where NYRI comes in. The plan to transfer "excess" upstate energy to downstate residents by constructing a huge series of high voltage transfer towers is obviously very controversial to the towns it will rip through.

The solution of opponents to NYRI is for the NYC area to produce more of its own power. As the New York Times recently pointed out in a article entitled "Ther Nuclear Option", building new nuclear plants and expanding old ones has gained credibility, even with erstwhile environmentalists. Nuclear power, despite the threat of terrorist attacks on plants and the need to store toxic waste for over 10,000 years, is being seen as a "clean" alternative to fossil fuels.

How are we going to deal with these often contradictory problems? If Eliot Spitzer, who has come out against both NYRI and the extension of the Indian Point nuclear plant near NYC, is elected governor which promise gets broken first? Or is there another way out of the dilemma through alternative technology or demand reduction?

Spitzer: You Gotta Fight, For Your Right, To Paaarty!

2006-07-26T15:15:00.000-04:00

Wonkette beautifully pointed out Eliot Spitzer's contradictory answers to the two marijuana questions during last night's debate: Yes, I have smoked marijuana. No, I don't support legalizing medical use of marijuana.

"So he’ll smoke it, but he won’t let you smoke it if you have tumors. What the hell next? Is he going to start insider trading?"

Investment News: The 401 Keg Plan

2006-07-25T22:50:00.000-04:00

A friend e-mailed me the following floating around the internet. I heartily agree with the sentiment after tonight's disappointing Spitzer/Suozzi debate proved upstate will be getting four more years of benign neglect from our NYC overlords:

If you invested $1,000 last year in the following stocks, your return would be:

Nortel: $49.00.
Enron: $16.50
WorldCom: less than $5.00

However, if you purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago,drank all the beer,
then turned in the cans for the recycling refund, You return would be $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It's called the 401-Keg Plan.

Cheers Zac!

Spitzer-Suozzi Debate--Upstate Doesn't Exist

2006-07-25T22:21:00.000-04:00

If you watched the only debate scheduled between the two Democratic candidates for governor of NY State, you heard lots of stuff either Elliot Spitzer or Tom Suozzi will do for NY City and environs. Fire the heads of the power company and transit authority. Spend billions of dollars to improve (only) NY City's schools. Shut down the NYC area nuclear power plant. Rebuild the Ground Zero site with differing percentages of commercial and residential space.

About the only thing that apparently will happen upstate is that the governor will live in the governor's mansion in Albany. Oh, Spitzer assured us that he has toured our poor area (he didn't mention Appalachia this time). Suozzi did mention that he would support the passage of laws that would make the upstate business climate more "attractive" (read anti-union: repeal Wickes law, and reform scaffolding legislation), but was short on specifics on how to reform insurance and worker's comp. problems.

NYCO said it best in her first post on the debate: "I am %@^$%^@#&$%ing furious at the fact that nearly every non-general question asked in the debate was about #^&$^#&*%^$&*%^&ing New York City issues."

BuffaloPundit pointed out how Buffalo, where there was no live televised coverage of the debate, lost out twice: "If you’re a Buffalo-area Democrat, you have been essentially foreclosed not only from seeing the debate, but even being a salient issue for discussion."

Nothing on upstate issues such as floods in the Southern Tier, increasing number of factory farms upstate, New York Regional Interconnect powerline project, DestiNY USA, funding for non-NYC school districts, Buffalo's financial control board--the list is endless on the issues they ignored.

Residency Requirements

2006-07-21T09:40:00.000-04:00

Gotham Gazette has a great review of residency requirements for municipal workers. The city recently relaxed their regulations and have allowed members of a major clerical union the right to move out of the city and still keep their jobs. Of course, the reasons are different for NYC compared to Syracuse. In NYC the workers in question wanted out because it's increasingly difficult to find affordable housing in the city. In Syracuse, white, middle class employees don't want to send their kids to city schools.

The courts have held up residency requirements for municipal workers, despite the hodgepodge of exemptions for police, firefighters, teachers and sanitation workers. Syracuse must work to end those state exemptions and bring those jobs (and homeowners/tax revenues) back to the city. As the former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin observed: "People have a constitutional right to live anywhere they want. They do not have a constitutional right to public employment."

Keep Your Eyes On The Prize

2006-07-14T19:33:00.000-04:00

No, this isn't another Springsteen post, although it is informed by my total saturation in his latest album, a collection of old folk songs.

I have despaired lately about my ability to help our community make real change. As an organizer, can I really accomplish anything? Change seems impossible. The powers that be are on the march and we're just a terribly worn down speed bump. I read a piece like Sean Kirst's piece on his blog The rain, raw sewage and the lake and I feel like someone punched me in the gut. In a few sentences Sean points out that our campaign to stop the County from ruining our neighborhood with a raw sewage treatment plant at Midland Ave. has been irretrievably lost.

Not only that, he uses the supportive language for our plan for underground storage that we begged the media to use for over five years. AAAGH! Why now? What good now does it for the paper to say " it made me think about how nice it would have been, just once, if we had done things in the way of so many progressive communities - and solved the problem up front, in its entirety, and not left the final answer to our children."

Of course, it's not the Post Standard or Sean's fault. I'm not mad at them. I'm mad at myself for caring so much. Why have I chosen a profession that takes up most of my waking hours with worry, rage and angst? Why can't the good folks win once in awhile? Pondering these questions while listening to Bruce's latest album gave me a partial answer. The title of this post refers to the gospel song that was later adapted as a freedom song by the civil rights movement. The lyric that races around my mind lately:

"I've got my hand on the gospel plow/won't take nothin' for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize/hold on."

The song both embarrasses me and gives me great comfort. No one ever said that changing the world was going to be easy. No one guaranteed success. The good guys (in the Californian gender-free sense) often lose. How you respond to this knowledge dictates your ability to continue in the fight. Baby boomers such as myself (and later generations as well, I guess) are particularly prone to these demons. The world has revolved around our desires and wishes for so long that we naturally assume that state of affairs will follow us into our chosen careers--even the world changing biz.

Prior generations understood that change may be imperceptible and may never be witnessed by those currently struggling. The cumulative struggle of generations may finally lead to the tipping point where rapid and final change may occur, like the drops of water wearing away the stone. However, individuals are largely single revolutionary digits, contributing their labor to something they cannot control. Spirituals and folk songs spoke to that understanding and gave support and strength to those in the fight. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it in his final speech I've Been To The Mountaintop:

"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! "

Great victories are long, complicated events. Civil War Reconstruction ended in 1878 and the great Civil Rights Acts weren't signed until 1964-65. Many thousands of activists struggled, suffered and died for African-American freedom during that time. The Soviet Union lasted from 1917 until 1989, dissidents and activists in many countries labored for the freedom eventually gained by forces such as Solidarity and Charter '77. The recent verdict in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld by the U.S. Supreme Court validated the 60 year old arguments made by dissenters to the execution of Japanese war criminals at the end of World War 2. The author of the Hamdan decision, Justice John Paul Stevens, was a law clerk to original dissenter Justice Wiley Rutledge.

I'm not trying to conflate the small struggles that I am involved in on the city's Southside with the great people's struggles of the past century. I'm merely trying to point out that struggles for peace, justice and freedom are necessarily complex things. Whether fought on the grand stages of history or on Midland Ave., patience, faith and endurance are indispensible. I may be learning a hard lesson in this throw away culture, but it is a valuable lesson nonetheless.

Springsteen Heads To Europe, Expands New Album

2006-07-12T21:56:00.000-04:00

Bruce is taking the Seeger Sessions band back to Europe for two months of touring in Bruce hot spots like Ireland, Spain, Italy and Sweden.

The rumors are still flying about an expanded version of the new album "We Shall Overcome". Everyone coming out of the concerts are clambering for high fidelity versions of "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live", "Bring Them Home" and Bruce's version of "When The Saints Come Marching In." This is where Bruce fandom sucks. He's going to release an album identical to the one I bought a couple of months ago, with just a couple of added tracks. I will be at Sound Garden in Armory Square the day of release.

Shades of the Tracks fiasco. Bruce releases a four disc set of unreleased rarities (many of which had been concert staples for years.) Fans nearly riot when they find out that songs like "The Promise" and "The Fever" aren't included. So Bruce releases 18 Tracks--a 1 disc set culled from the four discs with three new songs. Back to Sound Garden on release day, buying 15 songs I already spent $30 on a month earlier, just to get three new songs.

Oh well, the price of fanaticism I guess.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

2006-07-11T16:09:00.000-04:00

Original Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett died last week at age 60.

Clamp on the headphones, turn on the blacklight and see the piper at the gates of dawn.

Bruce & Seeger Sessions Band On PBS

2006-07-11T14:54:00.000-04:00

The BBC recorded a special concert by Bruce Springsteen & The Seeger Sessions Band in London earlier this year. The show, will be broadcast on the PBS series "Great Performances." WCNY Channel 24 will broadcast the show locally on Thursday July 13th at 10:30 P.M.

One more chance to see this amazing 17 piece "arena folk" band. Here's a review of the show and setlist from the Backstreets website:

May 9 / London, England / St. Lukes Church
Not a bad spot for the Seeger Sessions Band's brand of gospel: this show was recorded for the BBC at St. Luke's, an 18th Century church restored by the London Symphony Orchestra as an intimate concert hall. "If they were attempting to give this the atmosphere of a country hoe-down in a village hall, then they more than succeeded," Peter Raymond tells us, "but the sheer exuberance and quality of the performance set it way apart from any local jamboree I've ever been to." BBC DJ Johnny Walker greeted "the luckiest 300 people in the world" -- many of them BBC contest winners, with Emmylou Harris, Stephen Merchant, and the Old Grey Whistle Test's Bob Harris also spotted -- before bringing on Bruce and the band. Springsteen quickly dismissed the riotous applause by joking, "you just practiced that -- it doesn't count!" Bruce and the band set aside original material to focus on the Seeger Sessions songs (plus the "Poor Man" centerpiece) from the main set. "How Can I Keep From Singing" went on despite the fact that "We forgot to bring that friggin' organ... we can't let that stop us, can we?" With retakes of "O Mary" and "Mrs. McGrath," the performance lasted 80 minutes, ending promptly after a rousing "Pay Me My Money Down" finale (and despite a persistent audience chanting for more). Nick Corr tells us: "Given it was meant to be a media showcase performance, I thought Bruce and the Band played a storming show, enahnced by the much smaller venue and closer environment... the entire crowd was well into the vibe, which the band seemed to pick up on and play off -- so despite the shorter set, it was the best of the three UK shows I witnessed.

Setlist: John Henry/O Mary Don't You Weep/How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?/How Can I Keep From Singing/Mrs. McGrath/Mrs. McGrath/My Oklahoma Home/Jacob's Ladder/O Mary Don't You Weep/We Shall Overcome/Pay Me My Money Down

The DestiNY Mess

2006-07-10T10:23:00.000-04:00

Wow, I went away for the weekend and I missed all the fun. Just a few comments on the DestiNY mess.

1) SIDA (and its little brother SEDCO) are the local equivalents of the NYS authorities that are bankrupting the state. These quasi-governmental agencies not only enable assholes like Driscoll in their end-runs around elected government, these agencies control millions of dollars and legally obligate taxpayers to economic development deals that have little to no public scrutiny.

In March 2004 SUN fought for and Stephanie Miner successfully proposed legislation giving the Council oversight over all economic development loans made under the federal government's HUD 108 loan program. In the past, the mayor and SIDA would use this program for crazy schemes. The failed businesses that were funded succeeded only in creating debt for city taxpayers--not the promised jobs and tax revenue.

2) Vito Sciscioli as Colin Powell Sean Kirst came up with the perfect description of this situation. Vito is intelligent, thoughtful and exceedingly personable. Unfortunately, Vito's high octane mix of talents are used in service to the plans of workaday politicians like Driscoll and Bernardi--people who are only there to do the bidding of the power structure. Like a good soldier, Vito does his duty, regardless of right and wrong.

3) I like Vito's pithy Hamilton beats up Jefferson Day quote. However, I would suggest that the genius of the American system of government is the balancing of often contradictory impulses. No one form should be given exclusive control. In Syracuse, when Lee Alexander was finally outed as a serial thief, the city eliminated the undemocratic Board of Estimate and supposedly vested all final votes on city financial matters in the hands of the Common Council. This SIDA loophole must be closed. The Council controls the purse, the Mayor administers the bureaucracy.

4) The city is facing an amazing array of problems: a city that grows older and poorer every day, deteriorating housing stock, a school system that doesn't educate a large number of its students, energy costs that are increasingly unaffordable. The list goes on and on. DestiNy will not do a single thing to deal with these problems and city officials will be spending most of their time and energy on the ramifications of this past week. All over a freakin' mall?

Not So Fast . . .

2006-07-03T19:28:00.000-04:00

I just finish posting my screed about the deficiencies of organized religion in general and my Episcopalian faith specifically, when I come across a speech by U.S. Senator Barack Obama on the need for progressives to "tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America."

Obama hits me where I live. He insists that we will be unable to solve the problems of poverty and racism if we ignore the powerful role that religion, even of the organized kind, can play in this struggle:

"After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man. Solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers' lobby - but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we've got a moral problem. There's a hole in that young man's heart - a hole that the government alone cannot fix."

Episcopalians Shaken by Division in Church

2006-07-03T10:41:00.000-04:00

This is why I don't believe in organized religions. These are my peeps, I'm a baptized and confirmed Episcopalian. I had been heartened by the liberal drift in social thought by the church over the years, much different from the fusty WASP church in which I was raised. It still couldn't rouse me from bed on Sunday mornings, especially since my wife and in-laws would pack me off to Catholic Church if I suggested some religious face-time.

Now the church is involved in a doctrinal meltdown that threatens the whole Episcopal structure in America and throughout the world. Apparently, the especially intolerant Episcopals in areas such as Africa and Asia cannot abide gay people. They do not want them in the church and they especially do not want them as ministers or bishops. They have threatened to leave the church and they have the numbers and clout. The "first among equals" in the Episcopal church is the Archbishop of Canterbury. He gets final say in this matter, since the English invented the whole religion (you know, so their king could get a divorce.) He's threatening to create a two-tiered church: one that discriminates against gays and thus are fully recognized members and a second "off-brand" church that tolerates gays and therefore has no formal influence.

What is this bullshit? God, protect me from your followers.

Summer Times Blues

2006-06-29T11:29:00.000-04:00

Why has the New Times butchered its annual Summer Times insert? Man, I remember when I used to run out and get extra copies to mail to relatives out-of-town. We used to use the guide throughout the summer. Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out the 1996 version of the Summer Times.

In addition to Onondaga County, there were separate sections on Skaneatleles, Auburn, Finger Lakes, Lake Ontario, Oneida Lake, Madison County, Mohawk Valley, Adirondacks, Thousand Islands & the Leatherstocking area. Each section had information on the best places to swim, fish, eat, hike, shop and party. The writers even included directions for a scenic drive through the area and a special "hidden treasure" feature.

Now check out Summer Times 2006. There are only features on Onondaga County, Finger Lakes, Rochester, Thousand Islands and Oswego/Lake Ontario. The write-ups have been seriously limited in length and in content. Each feature highlights the annual festivals in the area and some museums or other attraction. Almost nothing is included on outdoors activities. Gone are the swimming holes, the scenic drives and the sense of promoting the small, out-of-the-way uniqueness of upstate N.Y.

Is it the money? If so, to raise funds for the alternative press weekly, I suggest the New Times should cobble together the best of the archived Summer Times and publishing a Best Of Upstate NY travel guide. Get Spyder Rybaak back to write the outdoors stuff, Walt Shepperd on the Westcott Nation and Capt. 'Cuse on the cover. Play to their strengths.

I love the New Times and I have read it continuously since my high school days in the 1970's. I love the paper even though the only time I've been in the newspaper, the New Times chided SUN for being rude and disrespectful by protesting the Midland Sewage plant on Nick Pirro's front steps at 9 AM on a Saturday morning. Despite never getting a response to my letter of complaint, I remain a loyal reader. I just hope that the good New Times (their Destiny coverage and their smart-aleck editorial tone) continue to outweigh the bad (current Summer Times, dislike of SUN).

Now I Can Root For Brazil

2006-06-28T20:13:00.000-04:00

United States: my native home. Out after the first round, no victories, one moral victory tie.

Poland: my wife and in-laws native home. Out after the first round. One "for pride" victory over Costa Rica with big Polish crowd filing over the border.

Spain: Only European country I've visited. Advanced after great first round. Out after second round loss to France.

Mexico: only other country I've visited in World Cup. Loses in second round to Argentina.

Sometimes Upstate & NYC Work Together

2006-06-28T19:17:00.000-04:00

New Yorkers are always talking about the upstate/downstate divide and how the interests of each group of residents diverge. Many politicians make a good living out of exploiting this divide (on both sides of the borders). The most recent example of this problem is the NYRI plan to transport "excess" electricity from upstate to downstaters by building a monstrous high-power trail of towers.

Well, every once in a while the interests of both upstaters and downstaters intersect and the powers that be actually do the right thing. NYC has developed a plan to subsidize upstate farmers, in order to protect the city's sources of drinking water.

The Watershed Agricultural Council is a city/state organization that works to protect the watershed in the Catskills, the city's largest source of water. The commercial development that has taken a large portion of the farmland in the Croton area (the city's secondary water source) has forced the city to invest over $1 BILLION to build a new water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. 10 acres of parkland has been lost to the new plant.

A similar filtration plant for Catskill water would likely cost upwards of $4 BILLION. The Watershed Agricultural Council instead works to preserve the commercial viability of area farms by helping local products reach NYC stores and restaurants. In addition, the organization helps to fund the capital improvements that farms need to be more ecologically sustainable and reduce runoff into the watershed. These two strategies will hopefully keep more farms in business and discourage the commercial development of more farmland in the watershed area.

Rock 'n' Roll Quote Of The Year

2006-06-28T14:07:00.000-04:00

"When Neil (Young) came to us with the songs, I said ' Are you asking me if I want to go out every night and sing "Let's Impeach The President?" Fuck, yes!' "

--David Crosby, on Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young touring this summer
in support of Neil's new solo album "Living With War"

Rolling Stone June 29, 2006

Wow! Reality Triumphs Over DestiNY? For How Long?

2006-06-23T11:40:00.001-04:00

Ever go to a Common Council meeting? My job has me going to many. They are dreadfully boring things, almost all votes are 9-0 affairs with little to no discussion--that having happened in study sessions and behind closed doors. This makes truly contentious votes cracking good entertainment! And I missed out on this one, as I watched a Wallace & Grommit video last night rather than go to the hearing or even watch on News 10 Now.

I was not expecting six councilors to show the backbone to vote against the DestiNY juggernaut. We must give major props to Councilors Callahan, DeFrancisco, Miner, Ryan, Seals and Simmons. These folks will be pilloried for the next few months as Congel threatens both lawsuits and an end to the project. Where will the DestiNY windbreaker crowd show up for their next photo-op? Dear Leader must be supported.

This is, of course, nowhere near over and I'm afraid the damn thing will be built. The key contention seems to be whether the city is guaranteed to receive payments from the project commensurate with the amount of tax money that's being forfeited by the city. The Mayor believes his negotiations have given the city the guarantees it needs. The Common Council is not so sure. The city will be giving up over $380 million in property taxes over the next 30 years--more if increases are required (and when have taxes stayed stable for 30 years?)

The current stumbling block is apparently the lawsuit by current Carousel Mall tenants challenging the seizure of their lease rights by the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency. The Council reads the current contract to read that if an event such as this lawsuit goes against Congel and that either nothing is built or nothing more than a larger Mall, Congel still gets the tax breaks. The city could be giving up over $500 million with no chance of recouping more than a fraction of this in increased sales tax revenues. The mayor believes the city would be covered.

Who's right? The public has no clue, not having access to any of the documents. So we fall back on our stereotypes: Congel is a crook, we don't trust him. The Council is a bunch of power-mad dunces whose hubris will ruin our regions' best chance at recovery. Despite the fact that I subscribe to the first stereotype, I'd still like some meat put on the bone of this debate. The public needs a tutorial with charts and graphs and spreadsheets. Until that happens we'll just be content to spew rhetoric (like my Dear Leader cracks at the North Korean-style DestiNY rallies).

Bruce In Saratoga

2006-06-21T01:36:00.000-04:00

Bruce In Saratoga
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

Photo from Saratoga concert 6/19/06: Albany Times Union

Bruuuuce!

2006-06-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

Bruuuuce!
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

IMG_2530.JPG

A fellow Bruce fan's license plate--Saratoga, NY 6/19/06

Dancin' In The Dark. . . Folk-style!

2006-06-20T20:48:00.000-04:00

I've never seen anything like it: part tent revival, part political rally, part folk sing-a-long, part rockin' good time. Bruce Springsteen's performance at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on Monday night was all that and more. I don't think the smile has left my face yet, even though I lost my car keys and had to cut short a mini-Saratoga vacation for more clot-boy medical tests today.

Bruce may have called this an "experiment" but it certainly seems to be working. I saw The Rising tour in Buffalo, but the energy, passion and musical gambles in the house last night put even the E-Street Band to shame. All but two songs from the new album were played last night and several Bruce originals were remarkably recast. Go play "Adam Raised A Cain" off the Darkness On The Edge of Town album, a hard edged rocker with Bruce practically screaming several verses. Now picture the song with the guitar riffs translated to banjo! Dig the sultry blues intro to Johnny 99, supplemented with gospel harmonies and pedal-steel guitar. The revamped version of Further On (Up The Road), going from a rock song on The Rising album to an Irish reel on this tour is astounding.

I thought the band's rendition of "My Oklahoma Home" gives a good insight into what this band and tour are about. The song, a dust-bowl anthem from the 1930's, started out as pure folk, with just Bruce's voice and an acoustic guitar. Then the fiddles and pedal steel guitar were brought in, creating a western Swing mood. Finally, the four person horn section checked in bringing New Orleans-style jazz and a much quickened tempo. That's what the Seeger Sessions band is, a 17 piece collection of fiddles, horns, accordion, pedal steel, piano, banjo, gospel harmonies--all barreling down the road and everyone wondering where they're going. But everyone is so busy singing along and dancing that we just hold on for the ride.

Not only is Bruce revisiting the many roots and offshoots that encompass the folk tradition, he also brings a serious dose of the political consciousness that has always been reflected in what is, after all, the people's music. These songs were written many years ago and are testimony to the lives and hard times of ordinary people, often struggling against forces beyond their control. The unfortunate subtext of these songs is that the economic hardship, government incompetence and the pain and loss of war in these old songs are still with us today. The folk tradition also encompasses the desire to speak truth to power. Bruce is speaking out as no other popular entertainer today.

Racing On The Fridge

2006-06-16T02:42:00.000-04:00

Racing On The Fridge
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

Pearls Before Swine 6/15/06

Finally!

2006-06-06T01:09:00.001-04:00

I'll probably be writing more details about this over at my work blog SUN On The Rise, but we just got word that a grant application that I wrote netted SUN a $10,000 award for our work organizing residents to reduce crime in our neighborhoods.

If you work for non-profit organizations, you cut down forests of trees and use unknown quantities of bandwidth begging various foundations and government agencies for funding, only to repeatedly be given the bum's rush like a door-to-door salesman. It's satisfying to be on the right end of the equation for once.

Thanks to all the neighborhood residents who have come out to public meetings to hold officials accountable or sat in our office for hours drinking crummy coffee and devising strategies for our next project. One thing was a constant, thanks to the pressure of SUN members, the city of Syracuse has implemented a score of alternative programs that forge an alliance between our police, neighborhood residents, private businesses and non-profit agencies.

How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?

2006-06-06T01:09:00.000-04:00

I'm like an addict waiting for my next fix--two weeks until the Bruce show at Saratoga. I usually avoid bootlegs and other tour tidbits before the show for which I have tickets, but I couldn't resist watching Bruce on Monday's Tonight Show.

The song he played (with the full 20 piece Seger Sessions Band) was How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live? As you can see from the hyperlink, it's been done many times since its original performance by Blind Alfred Reed in 1929. The version I had originally heard was the rockabilly-influenced stomp of the 1980's NYC band the Del-Lords. I still have it on vinyl down in my basement, I think I'll probably fire up the turntable tomorrow.

The version tonight by Bruce left me speechless--even on the lo-fi speakers of my TV (turned up loud against the protests of my long-suffering wife. ) However, even my wife was won over by the performance. The pedal-streel guitar solos were offset by the drive of the horn section barreling in on the chorus. Bruce dedicated the song to "our friends in New Orleans". The lyrics have been updated to reference Katrina ("there's bodies floating on Canal" ) and takes an open-handed swipe at Bush treating his visits to the Gulf Coast as photo-ops.

"Poor Man" isn't on the Seger Sessions album, one of only a few unrecorded songs Bruce is playing on the tour. The other two in regular rotation are the Pete Seger anti-Viet Nam War song "Bring Our Boys Home (If You Love Uncle Sam)" and the standard "When The Saints Go Marching In". Hopefully we'll find some way to get these songs on our iPods soon.

My History In The Music Business

2006-05-31T16:44:00.000-04:00

I've always been a music fan and I've always loved playing music. In my life, I've had the ability to listen to music in almost every format devised: on the radio hidden under my pillow at night; old 78's from my parents; 45's I saved up my paper route money to buy; bulky 8-track casssetes that inevitably split my favorite songs between various sections; over 400 LP's that still sit on shelves in my basement; the homemade mix cassette tapes that in college had to be made for any new romantic attraction or keg party; CD's--the format I resisted until no one released LP's anymore; and now I mostly listen to the over 5,000 tunes I've ripped into MP-3 files from my CD collection (and the collections of friends and the library!)

I think the only two formats that I didn't buy into were reel-to-reel tapes and Sony's mini-disc. My cousins had the reel-to reels and I was impressed by the amount of music they held, but my parents would never have allowed me to spend that much on a tape player. Sony's ill-fated attempt to create a digital tape to replace CD's in much the same way cassetes improved on LP's is why Sony, the original innovator in personal music devices and CD's, is nowhere to be seen during Apple's run with iTunes and the iPod.

I, of course, have also invested in the newest technology to play all these formats: transistor radios that always ended up smashed to bits; lo-fi record players with the turntable arm that allowed you to play several records in a row (or just one side over and over again--my mom's nightmare); a summer wasted on an inherited 8 track player with "quadrophonic" sound (I never understood that one as I I don't have four ears); My deluxe component stereo system, an entire summer job's wages invested in a receiver/cassette player and turntable set-up from the long-lost Gordon Electronics on Erie Boulevard. This system sits in my basement, still working. It's volume and tenacity has pissed off my parents, several college and post-grad roommates and now my wife. I have owned several Walkman tape players that went from Soviet TV-sized to streamlined, and added an expensive 5-disc CD player to my stereo, as well as the inevitable Discman.

I went through this breakdown of my music listening history for one reason. I still can't believe that a player the size of a credit card can put over 3,000 tunes in my shirt pocket. I've always been an Apple computer person so I was hipped to the iPod and the iTunes software application early on--I'm still amazed at how much damn use I get out of the iPod. (and I still haven't upgraded to the video iPod. That may happen soon, when the economics of downloading The Daily Show and the Colbert Report start to beat out cable fees.) My feeling may have been influenced by my recent 10 day stay in the hospital--many of which were spent confined to bed. Along with visits and phone calls from family and friends, my iPod kept me sane.

Haditha: "Democracy assassinated the family that was here,"

2006-05-27T17:14:00.000-04:00

In November of last year, in retaliation for the death of a comrade by an improvised explosive device, a Marine squad murdered 24 innocent people--many were women and children trying to shield their male relatives from gunfire. Remember the town, Haditha. It looks like this is the case that will finally get the attention of the American public--our "boys" in Iraq are engaged in combat: deadly, mean and often inhuman.

When our military gets bogged down in conflicts with no demonstrable way to win, often fighting insurgents using guerilla tactics, we face this fact: stressed out soldiers take out their frustrations on innocent non-combatants in murderous and vile ways.

This Memorial Day, say a prayer for the innocents of Haditha slaughtered by American soldiers in a barbaric afternoon of hatred and blood lust. Our military is put in a no win situation: a war they can't win, a foe that can't really identify and stress and depression from the loss of comrades. Haditha is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

Haditha makes it impossible for me to pretend that Memorial Day is anything but hypocritical. The draft dodgers and other chicken hawks in power place our troops into the kind of moral morasse in which there are no winners--just dead innocents and newly minted murderers.

Remember Haditha when you sanction the use of your tax dollars for use by our military. This mission was allegedly undertaken to free a country from dictatorship and establish democracy throughout the region.

On DestiNY USA

2006-05-25T12:03:00.000-04:00

We’ve been subjected to breathless pro and con commentary on the expansion of the Carousel Mall for several years. The Syracuse Newspapers has editorialized and endorsed solely on how to promote this development. The broadcast media put together a working group and a commercial touting the benefits of the development. Bob Congel, head of Pyramid Development, has put forth his own multi-media push, combining scare ads featuring Osama Bin Laden, North Korean-style brainwashed cheerleaders in Destiny jackets applauding Dear Leader at public events, piles of steel girders outside the site, political lobbying, contributions and his own public threats to cancel the project.

The entire catalyst for this project is Pyramid’s desire to avoid paying property taxes. After exhausting their original 15 year agreement for exemption from property taxes, Pyramid convinced the County and city into exempting the mall for an additional 30 years of taxes, as well as to have the city bond for public improvments to the mall area--in return for unspecified expansions to the mall that have at times included an aquarium, an indoor version of the Erie Canal, golf courses, hotels, ski slopes: an amazing experience that would become anywhere from the first to the fourth largest shopping mall in the world and attract people from all over the Northeast to our town. To qualify for this deal Pyramid Development had to prove it had financing in place to expand the mall by 800,000 ft. of retail shopping space.

When the Driscoll Administration attempted to put some meat on the bones of this proposal, a court ruled that the terms of the original deal had been met (despite the fact that a very large piece of Pyramid’s financing was bonding by the quasi-governmental Syracuse Industrial Development Agency). The much-touted “new” agreement supposedly guarantees two more stages of development past the expansion of retail space. In addition, the city and county agreed to extend their agreement on percentages of expected sales tax revenues to the year 2022, while Pyramid will frontload some of the expected sales tax revenue to give the city some dough to balance its budget and pay for the increased public services it will have to provide to the mall area.

Phew. I’m glad that’s settled.

However, it’s a sad day for our region. In the modern version of the United State’s service and information economy, Syracuse has chosen to become the fast-food worker. Welcome to Syracuse! Would you like some fries with your Happy Meal? We have wasted thousands of hours and millions of dollars to develop a slick, soulless cathedral to consumption. The jobs it produces will be minimum wage and low skill, making it impossible for workers to buy a house or pay for a college education. Workers better hope the mall is big enough that they can get two or three of these McJobs.

What are the ripple effects to our community? A very threat is the collapse of small businesses and neighborhoods bypassed by the DestiNY hordes. Since there are no concrete plans, we have no idea what the place will look like. My hope is actually perverse. Just build the new retail space. If there are no new hotels, restaurants and other entertainment attractions, people will be forced to leave the mall. If everything is under one roof, sayanara Armory Square, Little Italy et. al. Syracuse will become like Atlantic City, a huge complex surrounded by a ghost town of vacant properties and parking lots.

Instead of spending this kind of effort on the types of industries that have potential in our area--health care, environmental protection and software engineering--we settle for the industry with the least benefit to our area. Walt Shepperd of the Syracuse New Times many years ago came up with the perfect question about our region’s economy, one we have ignored at our own peril: “Can we all survive by selling each other cheeseburgers?”

Cover Me

2006-05-24T10:53:00.000-04:00

On the Listen Up blog from the Post Standard's Mark Bialczak is this iten about cover songs.

Ever go see a band in a bar? Ever hear them play an insipid cover of a song that sucked when the original band did it years ago? Should bands be barred from playing songs like “Celebration” by Kool & The Gang? Most purist rock fans I know would rather go to the opera than listen to a cover band. Then there are the drunk bar patrons who ONLY want to hear what they already know, as if the band were just a fancy jukebox.

Here’s a perfect lament on the strain on bands to play to the least common denominator bar patron by John Eddie, called “Play Some Skynyrd”:

“Here’s a song about my daddy/here’s a song about my past
Here’s a part where I open up my heart/Here’s a line where I tear off my mask
Then a voice in the back stops me in my tracks/brings me crashing back when they say

Play some Skynyrd, play some Petty, play some Seger, play some Dead
Who the hell is John Eddie?/That’s what the redneck said
If you want to stick around/you’ve got to play some Skynyrd.”

I’ve never been like my music police friends--while any band worth seeing plays mostly originals, I think a couple of well-chosen covers might give an insight into the band’s influences or even give them a chance to stretch their playing by tackling something radically different from their style.

Hence, my favorite covers:

1) Summertime Blues--The Who originally by Eddie Cochran

2) Oye Como Va--Santana originally by Tito Puente

3) Black Magic Woman--Santana originally by Fleetwood Mac

4) Take Me To The River--Talking Heads originally by Al Green

5) Hurt--Johnny Cash originally by Nine Inch Nails

6) Trapped--Bruce Springsteen originally by Jimmy Cliff

7) Knowing Me, Knowing You--Marshall Crenshaw originally by Abba

8) The Man Who Sold The World--Nirvana originally by David Bowie

9) Little Wing--Stevie Ray Vaughan originally by Jimi Hendrix

10) Respect--Aretha Franklin originally by Otis Redding

Hillary Sucks, My iPod Rocks

2006-05-23T03:17:00.000-04:00

In a
recent speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Hillary Clinton got all cranky and whaled on "kids these days." According to N.Y.'s junior senator, kids don't appreciate the value of hard work and that modern technology like iPods, cable TV and the internet have created a kids with a need for instant gratification.

Well, I'm not a kid anymore, but these kind of blasts continue to piss me off. Please shoot me if I ever become the kind of middle-age person that makes gross generalizations about entire generations.

In response, 5 reasons my iPod is more valuable to me than my very junior U.S. Senator from NY State:

5) My iPod didn't singlehandedly screw our nation's chances at universal health insurance.

4) My iPod's only job is to serve me, it's not using me as a springboard to becoming a Tivo.

3) My iPod didn't tell me years ago that "it takes a village to raise a child" only to complain now that the village raised a bunch of spoiled brats.

2) My iPod treats me like an adult, playing anything I load. My iPod doesn't lecture me about morals and decency.

1) My iPod didn't vote in favor of the War In Iraq

The Amazing Adventures Of Clot Boy

2006-05-23T00:37:00.000-04:00

I've just returned home after spending 10 days in the hospital fighting a pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis, a rather large blood clot in my lungs and two smaller clots in my legs. There were symptoms that I had downplayed for weeks: pain in my legs, reduced ability to catch my breath, cough, fever. I have increased risk factors: weight, circulation issues, family history. I went on a long car trip to Arizona in November--four days each way with little time to stretch my legs.

I'm lucky to still be around. I did not pay attention to my symptoms. Two weeks ago I thought I had bronchitis, so I got some antibiotics and then went to Washington, D.C. for a grassroots conference featuring more car travel and running around at several protests.

From the Web MD site hyperlinked above:
"Unexpected death from a massive PE is second only to the sudden cardiac death. Approximately 10% of patients who develop PE die within the first hour, and 30% die subsequently from recurrent embolism. The diagnosis of PE is missed in approximately 400,000 patients in the United States per year, approximately 100,000 deaths could be prevented with proper diagnosis and treatment."

I'm not out of the woods yet, I'm facing months (if not years) of blood-thinner medicine, regular blood tests, complete vetting of all new foods and medicines for compatiblity with my blood thinners, a none-too-soon diet and excercise regimen. However, I do have many people to thank:

1) My wife. She forced me to take my symptoms seriously and was there by my side for this entire ordeal.

2) The on-call doctor at CNY Family Care who sent me for a CAT scan.

3) The doctors, nurses, assistants, tech staff, orderlies--every person I ran across--at St. Josephs. They work incredibly hard, long hours full of stress and unpleasant situations. Not once did I ever see anyone be anything but professional and compassionate to their patients (even the phlebotomists who had to take blood samples from me at 3 A.M.)

4) My family and friends who visited and called--keeping my spirits up.

I will be unable to thank the one person who helped me the most. My sister Elizabeth died from an undiagnosed pulmonary embolism two years ago, she was only 36 years old. I was 10 years older than my sister, my only sibling. I was the protective older brother, and as such I always knew better and never failed to let her know my thoughts on all subjects far and wide. To her credit, she still loved me. Our last conversation was about my health and her concern about the combination of my weight and circulation problems. Blood tests will determine if I have a genetic predisposition to forming blood clots. I already know one genetic fact. Even after her death, my sister's love and concern reached out and saved her hard-headed brother's life.

I Fight Evil For A Living

2006-05-08T23:57:00.000-04:00

This weekend, the community group I work for attended the 35th annual National People's Action conference in Washington, D.C. The N.P.A. conference brings together grassroots neighborhood activists from across the country. The issues we collectively work on are as diverse as the conference attendees--predatory financial loans, increased school funding, lack of adequate health care, affordable housing, fighting the expansion of factory farms, immigrant rights and utility costs. The N.P.A. family is black, white, latin@ & asian. We are young, middle age and old. We are rural and urban. We are male and female, gay and straight. We live in neighborhoods whose only real wealth lies in the strength, perseverence and courage of its residents.

For 35 years, N.P.A. has fought for justice--and have celebrated numerous victories. Most importantly, N.P.A. is responsible for the creation of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a law that requires banks receiving government insurance for their deposits make loans in all the neighborhoods they serve. This law, and its companion Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), has resulted in over $1 trillion worth of mortgage loans in underserved neighborhoods since its passage in 1975.

The N.P.A. conference is an experience. Neighborhood leaders are able to get together informally with other activists to share information on organizing strategy. Workshops are also held by neighborhood leaders to publicize work they have done on an issue or to perhaps negotiate agreements with government and business officials on policy changes beneficial to low income neighborhoods. This year saw the Mortgage Bankers Association agree to work with N.P.A. groups fighting predatory lenders, modern day loan sharks out to steal the equity built up in our homes.

However, there are always government and business officials that refuse to talk with us--either at our conference or in a separate private meeting. These slights are not taken lightly. Hundreds of neighborhood folks jump on yellow school buses and go to the officials' homes in swanky D.C. area neighborhoods on the Sunday afternoon of the conference. This year, the headline in the Washington Post read: 'Protesters Swarm HHS Chief's Home.' The Chief referred to in the headline is Michael Leavitt, the cabinet Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

If the folks who want to ignore us do not get the message on Sunday afternoon, we go to their place of employment on Monday morning. This year, hundreds of N.P.A. activists ran up nine floors of a D.C. office building to demand that the American Petroleum Institute (A.P.I.) meet with us. A.P.I., the lobbying arm of Big Oil, refused to come to the N.P.A. conference to discuss the high costs of heating oil and natural gas, as well as the pitifully small contributions by big oil companies to weatherization programs in low income communities. After an hour of chanting, whistles and tense negotiations, a meeting was agreed to and will be held within the next 30 days.

Bruce & The Seeger Sessions Band At Saratoga--New Date

2006-05-05T13:54:00.000-04:00

The concert in Saratoga, NY by Bruce Springsteen and his now 20 piece folk band, on tour in suport of their new album "We Shall Overcome", has been moved to Monday June 19th at 8 P.M.

Oh, that scream you heard at about 10 A.M. this morning was when I found out that I scored two tickets inside the amphitheatre!

Many thanks to my high-tech ticket agents Kelly & Chris--who helped me negotiate the whims of Ticketbastard!

Bruce In New Orleans
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

Nuestro Himno--canción del año

2006-04-29T22:26:00.000-04:00

Nuestro Himno
Published April 26, 2006

Verse 1
Oh say can you see, a la luz de la aurora/Lo que tanto aclamamos la noche al caer? Sus estrellas, sus franjas flotaban ayer/En el fiero combate en senal de victoria,/Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertada,/Por la noche decian: “Se va defendiendo!”
Coro: Oh, decid! Despliega aun su hermosura estrellada,/Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?

Verse 2
Sus estrellas, sus franjas, la libertad, somos iguales
Somos hermanos, es nuestro himno.
En el fiero combate en senal de victoria,/Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertada,/Por la noche decian: “Se va defendiendo!”
Coro: Oh, decid! Despliega aun su hermosura estrellada,/Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?

gracias Chicago Tribune

Farewell To Arizona

2006-04-28T16:44:00.000-04:00

An Arizona Farewell
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

Oro Valley, AZ It's Been Real!

It's Not Taxes, It's Housing Costs

2006-04-27T10:44:00.000-04:00

According to US Census bureau reports on migration patterns within the country, Americans are continuing to leave the Northeast and relocate to the Sun Belt. In a CNN story on the trend, a key reason for these migration patterns is the extremely high costs of housing in areas like the Northeast and Far West cities.

Marc Perry, a demographer with the Census Bureau is quoted as saying that "some people are cashing out housing and moving to cheaper areas. Others who don't own homes are moving so they can afford to buy one."

Top 5 outmigration cities: N.Y.C., L.A., Chicago, San Fran. and Boston.

Top 5 inmigration cities: Riverside (CA), Phoenix, Tampa, Atlanta and Dallas

And to all you immigrant wall builders out there: New York State had more people move out of state than any other place in the country, BUT we still had a net population growth thanks to foreign immigration.

Alternatives To A Wall--Raise Wages, Keep Factories And Housing Safe

2006-04-27T10:09:00.000-04:00

As NYCO points out in a recent post, the last gasp solution (for both immigration opponents and our culture as a whole) is to build a wall to keep immigrants out.

Ivan Light, a sociologist at UCLA, points to other ways to manage immigration in a recent LA Times editorial entitled 'How L.A. kept out a million migrants'.

Between 1980 and 2000 the LA metropolitan area went from having 32% of all Mexican immigrants in the U.S. to only 17% of all Mexican immigrants--during a period when Mexican immigration increased by 120%. An estimated 1 million Mexican immigrants bypassed LA and settled elsewhere.

Professor Light cites public policy changes taken in California and Los Angeles that led to this deflection of the migration pattern from Mexico:

1) The state minimum wage was raised significantly during this time period, up to 122% of the federal level by 2000.

2) The city vigorously enforced existing laws on industrial safety and sweatshops after a 1995 case where Thai garment workers were held in virtual slavery.

3) The city also vigorously enforced housing safety and code violations in low income neighborhoods, closing down many unsafe tenement buildings.

Professor Light argues that this is the way metropolitan governments can regulate the flow of immigration, eliminating the fear of being inundated by immigrants fostered by anxious nativists and eliminating the need to do something so stupid as building a wall.

Bruce Day Part 2--The Album

2006-04-25T22:39:00.000-04:00

So I left work "to run an errand" at 10 AM and picked up "We Shall Overcome--The Seeger Sessions". I spent a good part of today listening to the CD in my car while driving around, as well as a more serious listen tonight. In addition, the CD is a combination "DualDisc" with a DVD component. The video features a look at the actual recording sessions, including the portion where Bruce urges everyone to have another drink to get the "loose" feel he wants on the background vocals of "Pay Me My Money Down."

I'm not going to attempt a song-by-song exegesis of the album, but I will hazard a couple of comments:

1. For people tired of the earnest Bruce Springsteen of 41 Shots, The Rising and Devils and Dust--this is your album. Even message songs like Mrs. McGrath (an anti-war lament) are offset by the straight-ahead, Irish-reel tune.

2. For people tired of the drier than dust, spare instrumentation of Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils and Dust--this is your album. A 17 piece band including tuba, fiddles, keyboards, trombone, trumpet really let 'er rip!

3. For people tired of musicians afraid to try new musical forms--this is your album. Bluegrass, old-time country, blues, Dixieland, zydeco, celtic--this is folk stew.

My favorite comment about this album was from a critic on Slate.com: "And who knew that Bruce Springsteen would be the one to remind American record buyers they need more tuba in their lives?

Council Does the Right Thing, Against Their Will

2006-04-25T13:06:00.000-04:00

If they had had their druthers, the Common Council would not have voted on Monday to bond for over a million dollars to repair the sewage problem that plagues Fowler High School, causing nauseating fumes to waft into the cafeteria.

The new city schools superintendent bumped the Fowler project to the very top of the school's To Do list. The sordid story of allowing the city's poorest students to face sewage problems in their lunchroom for over 15 years finally got too intolerable for even the school district.

However, the situation was not so intolerable that several Common Councilors publicly wished the project could be postponed ANOTHER year, so the city would not have to bond for the money, instead using part of the $200 million in the upcoming NY State budget being allocated for the first phase of the city's ambitious school renovation plan

Bruce Day Part 1--Good Morning America

2006-04-25T10:01:00.000-04:00

Some thoughts on the April 25th GMA coverage of Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band live from Asbury Park, N.J.:

1) Unlike the Today show coverage of a similar launch concert for The Rising, GMA didn't move their whole production down to the Shore. They sent Robin Roberts and their weather guy to do remote spots and crowd interviews.

2) Neither of these folks know a lick about Bruce or his fans.

3) Very superficial coverage, no stories about how this is his first covers album, the switch to folk/acoustic music, how loose this band is: nothing.

4) The segues were ragged and the show often talked over or cut away from Bruce performances--two full songs only. "Jacob's Ladder" and "O Mary Don't You Weep." Both are raucous, New Orleans-style, procession back from the graveyard jazz. Fiddle and horns predominate.

5) This GMA format clearly showed the drawback of this kind of alternative marketing forced on older musicians: Bruce wasn't the focus of the show, just another disposable segment, jammed between the tearful expose on step-parents and the hot new mother & child accessories for this summer. The hardcore fans get a taste, but we cannot dictate the coverage.

6) Mario Cuomo was NYS Governor and seriously considered running for president. Andrew Cuomo was HUD Secretary and current front-runner for NYS Atty. General. Why is Chris Cuomo pitching $2,000 baby strollers on an A.M. magazine show?

Rosie Sails Away

2006-04-25T00:50:00.000-04:00

Did anyone else catch this? I was watching the documentary 'Rosie's Family Cruise' on HBO. A nice movie about Rosie O'Donnell and her partner's idea to have a gay-friendly cruise ship vacation for gay/lesbian parents and their children. An entertaining and totally inoffensive (unless you're some fundamentalist bluenose) defense of diversity, familial love and tolerance.

Then, right at the end of the movie they start playing a cover version of Randy Newman's song "Sail Away" over a montage of families getting ready to depart the ship. I understand why they wanted to poach the lyrics about taking care of family and the refrain sail away, but did anyone read the rest of the lyrics or stop to figure out their meaning?

Randy Newman may now be known mostly as a composer of film scores to family fare like Finding Nemo, but early in his career he went out of his way to yank peoples chains. He wrote songs like "Rednecks", "Political Science (Let's Drop The Big One)" and "Sail Away"--perhaps the most non-PC song of all time.

The song is essentially a sales pitch made by a slavetrader to an unsuspecting African, extolling the virtues of the New World and asking him to get on board and "we will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay."

See Your City Through New Eyes

2006-04-22T14:33:00.000-04:00

Ever started to pass a few minutes by web surfing, hit on a site and then realize you've spent over an hour (or more)? For me that site is Flickr, the photo sharing site. You can put your photos up for free, allowing your friends and relatives to see your newest photos without having to spend an hour downloading them. You can make your photos public or private. There are a gazillion public photos, you can find specific topics or just wander around.

Flickr has two ways to find specific themes of pictures--groups and tags. Some Flickr folks set up specific groups for people posting photos on a specific theme: dogs, cities, parties etc. There are thousands of groups. Here are several links to photos about Syracuse and Central NY.

Also, each individual photo can have a tag attached--any number of descriptive words or phrases to identify the picture. To search for pictures with a tag is just like googling something: go to Flickr's tag page type in a subject, hit search and thousands of pictures of doggies, cities, parties etc. come up.

This Lifehacker article gives you a tip on how to have all the links to photos tagged with say, Syracuse, be delivered automatically into feed readers like Bloglines.

Happy time suckage!

Cherry Blossoms

2006-04-21T15:09:00.000-04:00

Cherry Blossoms
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

No need to go all the way to Washington, D.C.--just to my front yard!

Bruce Live On Good Morning America--Tuesday

2006-04-20T10:42:00.000-04:00

Don't know the time yet, but Bruce and the Seeger Sessions Band will perform live from the Asbury Park (N.J.) Convention Center on Tuesday morning April 25th on Good Morning America--ABC television.

Run out right afterwords and pick up the new album!

On the day before, Monday April 24th, Bruce will sit for an interview with Good Morning America as well.

Folk rocks!

Goodbye, George

2006-04-19T22:24:00.000-04:00

George Eccles died at age 84 last week. A loyal SUN member, he and his wife Kay came to our Southside meetings since we organized neighbors 15 years ago to fight off the conversion of the old Enrico's restaurant building into a convenience store/bar.

George was a relatively quiet and private man, often sneaking out of our meetings to have a smoke, yet his demeanor masked a fierce devotion to his family and neighborhood. In an age where people move out of their hometowns, change jobs every few years and families scatter to the winds, George was a throwback. Aside for the time he spent in the Navy during WWII, George was born, lived and died in the same Southside house. George worked for one employer for 40 years and then spent his retirement immersed in the lives of his children and grandkids.

Our neighborhood is a little less stable this week, we've lost an anchor.

Talkin' Trash

2006-04-18T17:53:00.000-04:00

Picking up on NYCO’s suggestion, I'm making a litter-ary contribution to the CNY blogosphere: spreading the discussion kicked off by Sean Kirst in his newspaper column and on his blog about how messy our city and environs are this Earth Day.

My substantive suggestion is to copy Oakland, Ca. and their fast food packaging tax. I would try to tweak the law so that companies that demonstrated a reduction in the amount of disposable packaging used in their businesses would get a break on the tax. The money would go directly to fund DPW crews dedicated to cleaning up the city (and perhaps to DIY volunteer groups, as well.)

I don't like the military/police suggestions to crack down on litterbugs through citations and higher fines. I imagine the same phenomenon that occurs in crackdown patrols like Operation Impact would occur in any Operation Litterbug--a disproportionate targeting of poor and minority folks for violations. Yeah, that's where the violations occur, but that's not the way to get people to work together and feel like they are part of a larger whole.

Trash in the inner-city is a reflection of cynicism and fatalism. I was taught to always find a trash can and to recycle and not to litter. But I also felt that I was a valued member of my community and had a reasonably decent expectation of becoming successful in that society. Not everyone in inner-cities believes that.

In one of Sean Kirst's posts on this issue, he mentioned the message that we send to young, low-income minority youths that their lives aren't worth any more than the garbage blowing around their neighborhoods. It's worse than that--more than likely, the youths threw that garbage themselves. This is their self-image.

That's why programs like the Go Green Syracuse recycling initiative in five city elementary schools is so important. To reach young children, every effort needs to be made to give them structured activities that will not only attempt to inculcate good behaviors (don't litter) but also create a love of their natural environment. That is what will, in the long run, lead to cleaner communities.

That's why an idea like NYCO's Sojourn Day may be the most important long run step we can take to reduce trash in our communities. Reconnect with the grass, streams, dirt, paths, parks, trees, bushes, small animals, insects, flowers all around you, the stuff that you drive by every day in your S.U.V. People more in touch with their natural surroundings will be less likely to let fly their Egg Mcmuffin wrapper.

Bruce Springsteen & The Erie Canal

2006-04-18T14:59:00.000-04:00

The official Bruce Springsteen website has been updated with lots of material from the upcoming Seeger Sessions album, including detailed historical and musical background on each of the songs on the album. The liner notes were written by definitive Bruce biographer Dave Marsh (and editor of the great journal Rock & Rap Confidential). Check out the notes for "Erie Canal":

"Written in 1905 by Thomas S. Allen as "Low Bridge, Everybody Down," but now as much a folk song as if it had been written anonymously eighty years earlier when the canal was America's most important highway. The Canal, constructed at huge expense from 1817 to 1825 to link New York City and the East with Buffalo and what was then the West, was America's first great national thoroughfare. It remained important until the heyday of the railroad, and after being enlarged from 1903-1918, remains in operation today, although now used mostly for recreation.

Travel was slow, in the early years on barges drawn by horses, and there were also long layoffs that inspired a whole range of recreations, including frog racing, drinking contests and fist fights. An entire genre of canal songs also developed: songs about the canal, songs that were popular at the inns and bars en route, songs sung by canal workers, songs by and for travelers.

By 1905, when Thomas Allen wrote his song, canal traffic was motor-powered and the idea of a mule-drawn barge tapped into nostalgia. "Low Bridge" reflects some knowledge of how the canal actually operated though, because as it passed through cities, the Canal did pass under some very low spans. And fifteen miles would have been a realistic pace for those early days, too.

"Erie Canal" remains a song most commonly known from parties and in play groups but a few folksingers like Glenn Yarborough and the Weavers have recorded it. The Sons of the Pioneers did a western version. Dan Zanes recently made a version for one of his children's albums, with Suzanne Vega singing lead. Pete's version can be found on several discs, including American Favorite Ballads, Volume 3

Bruce and Seeger Sessions Band At Saratoga June 21st

2006-04-17T15:55:00.000-04:00

The U.S. dates for Bruce Springsteen and his 17-piece "arena-folk" band were announced today. The closest Bruce comes to Syracuse is the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on June 21st. Four charity benefit shows in the Asbury Park Convention Center, a spot in the New Orleans Jazz Festival, several shows in Europe (all of which are selling out within minutes of tickets going on sale) and then 18 shows in the U.S.--a mixture of outdoor amphitheatres and basketball arenas (Madison Sq. Garden in NYC).

From the Springstreen press release: "In addition to Springsteen on vocals, guitar and harmonica, the US tour dates for the Seeger Sessions Band will comprise the following lineup: Sam Bardfeld (violin), Art Baron (tuba), Frank Bruno (guitar), Jeremy Chatzky (upright bass), Larry Eagle (drums), Charles Giordano (accordion, keyboards), Curtis King (vocals), Greg Liszt (banjo), Lisa Lowell (vocals), Eddie Manion (sax), Cindy Mizelle (vocals), Mark Pender (trumpet), Marty Rifkin (pedal steel guitar), Richie "La Bamba" Rosenberg (trombone), Patti Scialfa (vocals), Marc Anthony Thompson (vocals) and Soozie Tyrell (violin)."

Album drops next Tuesday April 25th--believe the hype.

Law Will Segregate Omaha Schools By Race & Ethnicity

2006-04-16T16:28:00.000-04:00

Several months ago, I recall being involved in a spirited conversation with several CNY bloggers about the nature of public school education in CNY, especially the stark difference between the financially challenged city school district and the more affluent suburban districts. Sean Kirst from the Post Standard pointed out that former mayor Tom Young had unofficially proposed setting up a county-wide school system, broken into city/county quadrants. While I supported this idea (and pointed out the real success that Raleigh N.C. has had with its county-wide school district) I also pointed out that suburban school districts and their families would oppose integration tooth and nail. I recall being urged to bring some more idealism to this issue.

Anyway, that brings me to this nugget of white, suburban fear, compounded by black separatist anger. In Omaha, Nebraska an attempt to annex 11 largely white school districts located within city limits, but controlled by adjacent suburban districts, has morphed into a law segregating the Omaha schools into 3 entitites--one white, one black and one hispanic.

E Pluribus Unum? Not if my kids have to go to school with black kids!

Cognitive Dissonance and My S.U.V.

2006-04-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

Cognitive dissonance is the mind's battle to reconcile two seemingly contradictory thoughts or perceptions.

I recently purchased a new car (well, new to me, a 2002 Honda CR-V). Yep, one of those boxy S.U.V.'s that gobble up gas and threaten to pound the crap out of little puny economy cars. My wife and I bought it because it's roomy (it's a mini-truck after all), Honda's are spectacularly reliable and we'll be able to pack up all three of our doggies for trips.

I'm all kinds of conflicted:
The car's not made by American unionized labor, but I'm atoning for American cultural imperialism and the atom bomb.
I'm not getting as many miles per gallon, but maybe I'll be more circumspect about unnecessary trips.
I'm selling out to American materialism, but dude--dig the 6 CD player!
No car payment balances our household budget, but I can donate the car for a tax deduction and help some charity.

I drove my '97 Ford Escort (bought new after being made by UAW labor in Wayne, Mi.) into the ground. The alternator was shot, necessitating a daily jump-start in the morning. The front driver's seat was like a rocking chair after diving to catch the leash of a dog attempting to escape out an open back door. The AC died two years into our relationship, too expensive to ever consider replacing. The horn died a couple of years later. My mechanic jerry-rigged an alternative horn with a button below the steering wheel because he didn't want to have to go through the airbag to get to the original horn. Too many fast food meals and too few trips to the gas station vacuum probably meant things were alive in the car. The pistons always rattled and made weird noises while struggling up steep grades. The car was green, except for the spots over the wheel wells that were sporting tons of rust. The passenger side window handle was constantly falling off and disappearing under the seats.

But for me, the car's worst feature: for over a year I had been driving with a car radio/cassette volume knob that had snapped off. When the knob came off in my hand the volume was blasting. I quickly shoved the knob back into place and turned furiously. Somehow, I was able to reduce the volume to practically nothing. Of course, I was never again able to adjust the volume, no matter how hard I pressed the knob into the hole and turned. The button would function as an on/off switch, but the volume remained so low that music was inaudible if the engine or defrost was on. No tunes while rolling around the 'hood for work. No Morning Edition or All Things Considered unless I wanted to pull into a parking lot and turn everything off.

I think this is what has allowed me to push through my cognitive dissonance and embrace my S.U.V-ness. Today, I opened the automatic sunroof, cranked up The Who ("Magic Bus" from Live At Leeds) to earbleed level and let the spring warmth wash over me as I ran some errands. Sometimes I overthink things. Life is good.

Frank Woolever

2006-04-11T00:18:00.000-04:00

Sean Kirst wrote a column today on Frank Woolever, the most recent Syracusan to go to jail for protesting the School Of The Americas--the U.S. military school that teaches repressive governments how to kill and torture their citizens who dare to stand up and speak for democracy. Frank will spend the next 3 months in federal prison.

I'm praying tonight for Frank Woolever (and I'm not a praying kind of guy.) Frank is in his seventies and not in perfect health. If there is any justice and karma in this life, Frank will come through his sentence very well. Among the many causes that Frank has invested his time, dedication and love is assistance to the incarcerated and their families.

I met Frank as a VISTA volunteer in 1992, recruiting other volunteers for the educational, counseling and religious programs at Auburn Correctional Facility. Frank had helped put together a local program sponsored by Cornell Cooperative Extension called Family Matters. This was a hardy group of family members with incarcerated relatives. They acted as a support group for each other and pooled resources together for transportation to often far-flung prisons. Frank always seemed to know of a church with a spare van or bus. He was able to keep family members in good spirits, as well as help them deal with the depression, guilt and frustration that was never far away. I was invited to one of their meetings and just kept coming back every month. They were one of the few rays of hope I saw during my 18 month tenure in the correctional system.

In later years, Frank helped to bring the Altamont Program to Syracuse. This very successful program started in Albany and its goal is to help ex-cons returning to their communities avoid returning to jail. Combining addiction counseling, housing and employment this program has helped hundreds of inmates become contributing members of their community. Locally, the group purchased and manages the Lemoyne Manor in Liverpool--training for jobs in the hospitality and restaurant industries.

Anyway, Frank Woolever is a genuinely decent man, I am privileged to know him. Our community is richer for his contributions and we need to listen intently to the rationale for his great sacrifice. We owe Frank that much.

Journalistic Malpractice at WSYR TV 9

2006-04-08T00:19:00.000-04:00

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has released a report titled "Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed" on the increasing practice of television news programs repackaging slick PR pieces by corporations and passing off these video news releases as the work of the station's reporters.

The report identifies two instances where WSYR-TV 9 and medical reporter Carrie Lazarus acted as shills for drug companies, while passing themselves off as objective reporters.

On December 26, 2005 Channel 9 aired a video news release created for the maker of an arthritis drug. The piece was not identified as prepared public relations and touted the drug as a "major health breakthrough". The CMD report points out that a simple web search would have turned up statements from the National Institutes of Health stating that the drug was not any more effective than placebos in a recent trial.

On December 12, 2005 Channel 9 aired a video news release touting a cream to relieve symptoms of eczema. Again, the station made the piece look like it was created by the news team and not a public relations firm. The FDA requires all commercials, and even these pseudo-news video news releases, to include warnings about potentially harmful side effects. News reports about the drugs aren't held to that standard. Channel 9 edited the warnings section out of the video news release before broadcast.

Race, Class & G-Mac Redux

2006-04-04T00:40:00.000-04:00

In a recent post I ruminated over the amazing local popularity of Gerry McNamara, a hero worship that I think is fueled by the overwhelmingly white S.U. fan base pining for a star of their own.

Now comes word that G-Mac has been awarded the 2006 Chip Hilton Award. The award goes to the athlete who best exemplifies the traits of Chip Hilton, a fictional high school sports star featured in a series of books for young adults written by former college basketball coach Claire Bee in the 1960's.

What was Chip Hilton like? According to Ken Garfield, the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer:
" He was the straight-A, high school sports star who hit the homer, dated the homecoming queen and valued sportsmanship at all times. He was a hero to kids with stars in their eyes. He was the guy we wished we could be. And even though he was fictional, he was as real as the hope we carried in our heart. Play fair, work hard and listen to your parents and you, too, could grow up to be as straight and tall and happy as Chip Hilton."

You can't make this stuff up.

The CNY Corner Of The Blogosphere

2006-04-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

My favorite blogs by Central NY’ers actually writing about C.N.Y.

Baloghblog: It started with peak oil (when reserves are more than half gone it will become cost prohibitive to extract the oil), leading to discussions on how to live a more localized and sustainable life and resulted in a sister blog Geddesblog dealing with economic development of his corner of C.N.Y. Unfortunately, Balogh seems to have thrown most of his recent efforts into a group environmental blog out of Ithaca--C’mon, think local, Balogh! Once peak oil hits Ithaca may as well be on the moon.

bethquick: Written by a newly minted Methodist minister (preacher, pastor?), this blog touches on a wide variety of topics--practical discussions on the vocation of ministry, the ethical background of political issues and her quest to read 52 books (one a week) during this year. I would recommend all who equate religion with both political and cultural conservatism to read this blog, liberals can believe too!

blogJosh: Personal blog by a multi-talented writer, musician and web person. The blog also touches on a number of subjects, veering from poetry to defense of abortion rights to a beautiful description of the camraderie of strangers all rooting for the SU basketball team in a downtown bar. The only drawback--I hate the neon font on the black background!

CNY ecoBlog: provides the links to scientific evidence that more fully explain news stories that the local media has dumbed down for its scientifically-challenged readers (such as myself.) Of particular interest was the recent debunking of a lead article in a recent Sunday Post-Standard on “Dead Zones” in Oneida Lake, something that is quite routine and known to scientists as Seasonal Lake Stratification. He also provided a link to a 1938 academic paper on midwinter crow distribution in NY State to show that the current kerfluffle over crows is largely one huge Stupid Human Trick, unlikely to change unless we blow the place up or succumb to peak oil.

Cookin' in the 'Cuse: written by the rector at Grace Episcopal about her passion for food. Not just about recipes and restaurants, the posts often deal with issues of local production and consumption, food co-ops, organics and the nascent slow food movement. However, there are great recipes and restaurant reviews. The photographs accompanying the recipes can only be described as food porn--if the Internet was only scratch, sniff and eat!

Sean Kirst: written by one of the columnists for the Post-Standard, this weblog is a great addition to his columns, giving him space to print additional material that couldn’t fit in the paper, reprint old columns that touch on a current issue or to ruminate on what it’s like to be a parent, city-dweller, sports fan etc. in C.N.Y. The clunky format used by the paper forces comments into a separate forum, but it has helped spur some fairly in-depth discussions on issues such as local economic development and urban planning (or lack thereof) in C.N.Y.
AND he’s the guy who wrote the front page P-S story on the photographer who shot Bruce’s Born to Run album cover.

LuceLu in Liverpool: a personal blog that has followed the trying times facing a family attempting to survive the crumbling upstate economy. The current era of this blog is ending as the blogger’s husband has given up trying to find unionized electrician jobs in town and the entire family is moving South. Reading the archives of this blog is like reading the untold history of our community. Good luck and godspeed, Lucelu.

NYCO’s Blog: As Balogh once commented, this is the “Mack Daddy” of CNY Blogs. NYCO covers NY State government and politics (the dysfunction beat), life in upstate communities and has especially sharp commentary on Native American history and its impact on our area. Her writing is insightful and elegant, without being overly formal. My favorite example is a post on the Cheney gun shot fiasco that summed up the liberal critique of the Bush Administration in under 100 words. If there are conversations to be had in this CNY blogosphere, they usually happen here--witness the recent flurry of comments posted on the topic of immigration and the Minutemen in the North Country. The only drawback--the demise of her Upstate Living magazine, mock front covers of a glossy magazine devoted to upstate. Every time a new cover appeared there would be several comments wishing that the magazine actually existed.

York Staters: Although its editorial team is based in Johnson City and somewhere downstate, this blog writes often and eloquently about Central N.Y. The term York Stater was an historical reference, an attempt to forge an identity that isn’t based on pointing out that we’re not from N.Y.C. The posts are long, well-researched and give current ideas and issues historical context. If you read York Staters, you know how Penn Yan got its name, the continuing cult of personality in Johnson City of the head of Endicott-Johnson Shoes and background on the Sagamore Great Camp in the Adirondacks. (You also get the skinny on upstate foods, books and famous citizens.)

Los medios son el mensaje

2006-03-29T11:43:00.000-05:00

Whatever your position on the current immigration policies being discussed in the U.S. Senate and the bill passed in the House, you can’t help but be impressed by the massive outpouring of protestors in several US cities over the past two weeks. Los Angeles had between 500,000 to 1 million people out in the streets at a massive rally/march last Sunday. The next day, over 15,000 L.A. high school students walked out of classes to attend several different protests.

As an organizer, I was impressed by the use of media--both old and new--to get these protests off the ground. As for the rally, many folks are pointing to the unprecedented cooperation of Latino DJ’s on commercial radio stations to promote the event.

As for the high school rallies, more tech savvy kids used
forums like MySpace.com to organize this action--mostly over one weekend.

Matthew Sweet Is Alt.Pop

2006-03-27T23:18:00.000-05:00

Matthew Sweet is the kind of rocker that you always tell your friends about, and are surprised when they've never heard of him. In a just world, he'd be a huge star. I created a whole new genre designation on my iTunes program, largely when confronted by his music (although Ben Folds and Better Than Ezra fit nicely there, as well): Alt.Pop

Sweet's music is pop, but not saccharine and with a distinct rock kick. Pick up albums like Girlfriend or 100% Fun and find out for yourself.

Why the shout-out? His new album is coming out soon, working with Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles on covers of great 60's pop.

"Songs such as Fairport Convention's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?" sit comfortably alongside a nicely sloppy bash at the Who's "The Kids Are Alright." A letter-perfect, feedback-stoked version of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" segues naturally into Love's flamenco-dusted ballad, "Alone Again Or."

Call Now, Phone Lines are Open!

2006-03-24T21:05:00.000-05:00

Call Now, Phone Lines are Open!
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

Laugh of the week: a web-only comic called Minimum Security. It's slogan is Resistance Through Ridicule. A strip lampooned South Dakota state Senator Bill Napoli who helped push through the recent state law banning all abortions. A woman in the strip opines that since Napoli believes woman can't make decisions for themselves, she will call him whenever she needs to make a decision: say choosing between vinaigrette or honey mustard dressing. The laugh comes from the fact that she includes Mr. Napoli's home and office phone numbers in the strip. Call now, phone lines are open!

Protest Songs

2006-03-24T17:55:00.000-05:00

The American Sociological Association has created a list of "essential" protest songs.

Among the selections:
“We Shall Overcome,”
“The Times They Are A-Changin’”--Bob Dylan
“Which Side Are You On?”--1930's union anthem
“Fight the Power”--Public Enemy.
“Respect”--Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin
“Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” --James Brown.
“I Ain’t Marching Anymore”--Phil Ochs.
“Strange Fruit”--Abel Meeropol
“Lift Every Voice and Sing”--lyrics by James Weldon Johnson; music by J. Rosamond Johnson.

I agree with Bob Dylan (who wrote so many brilliant protest songs it's hard to limit him to one), Public Enemy and James Brown. I don't think any of the others would make my Protest! mix tape.

Jason Zengerle wrote a good piece in the New Republic on why there's no good protest music anymore. Iraq War protest music was terrible--preachy, whiny and about as literary as a Democratic National Committee leaflet. He laments the lack of artists like Dylan:

" . . .A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" which Dylan wrote during the Cuban missile crisis--never specifically mentions war. Instead, it uses apocalyptic imagery--'I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans. ... I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin', I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'--to convey the horrors of war and, in the process, transcends its topic."

Here's my mix tape:

The Times They Are A-Changin'--Bob Dylan
Fight The Power--Public Enemy
Say It Loud (I'm Black And I'm Proud)--James Brown
This Land Is Your Land--Woodie Guthrie (Bruce Springsteen live version!)
Open Letter To A Landlord--Living Color
My City Was Gone--The Pretenders
White Riot--the Clash
Things Goin' On--Lynyrd Skynyrd
Inner City Blues--Marvin Gaye
Living For The City--Stevie Wonder
Atomic Power--Louvin Brothers (Uncle Tupelo version)
Biko--Peter Gabriel
Talking 'Bout A Revolution--Tracy Chapman
Burnin' & Lootin'--Bob Marley
There Is Power In A Union--Billy Bragg
Born In The U.S.A.--Bruce Springsteen
Bullet The Blue Sky--U2 (live version)
Fight For Your Right (To Party)--Beastie Boys

. . .well, maybe not that last one

Random Thoughts

2006-03-23T23:26:00.000-05:00

Check out the movie "Junebug" on DVD. The performance of Amy Adams was so good in this movie that she was nominated for an Academy Award, even though hardly anyone saw the small-budget film. The best line--her retort to her self-absorbed, immature husband --"God loves you just the way you are. . .but he loves you too much to let you stay that way."

Why did the public meeting on the potential demolition of Rt. 81 through the city of Syracuse start with 45 minutes of blathering by Van Robinson about all his work on the city's comprehensive plan? Was this actually the first event in the Robinson '09 mayoral campaign?

The Boston Red Sox have two of the best names in pro sports: Coco Crisp and now. . .Wily Mo Pena . You can't make this stuff up.

Why did the city end the tradition of making Opening Day for the local AAA baseball team a half day--so employees could take in the traditional afternoon game? The city, county and private businesses should pick that back up, at least one game would be well attended.

Best St. Patrick's Day Parade celebration--The Ukrainian Home on Tipp Hill and their feast of pyrohy, holubchi and kielbasa. Hey, it's still cabbage, potatoes and prepared meat!

Working Families With Children Less Likely To be Homeowners

2006-03-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

According to a recently released study by The Center for Housing Policy, working families with children are less likely to own their homes now than thery were twenty-five years ago. The report studies data on homeownership and housing costs between the years 1978 and 2003.

The national homeownership rate in 1978 for all families was 65% and increased to 68% in 2003. However, homeownership rates for working families with children decreased from 63% to 60% during this same time period. Families surveyed were working and had incomes from minimum wage up to 120% of the area median family income.

The gap in homeownership between minority working class families and their white counterparts also widened during this time period. Minority families with childrensaw their homeownership rates remain at 45% for this time period. White working class families with children actually saw an increase in homeownership--from 69% to 71%.

The report speculates on some of the demographics behind this decline:

1) Working families with children are twice as likely to be single-parent homes in 2003, as they were in 1978.

2) Housing costs (mortgage, insurance, utilities and taxes) increased 30% more than incomes during this period.

City Jobs: Suburban Work Force

2006-03-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

The city won a phyrric court case about its residency requirement. The state courts have ruled that the city can require its workforce to live in the city or lose their jobs. The city can do this even if 80% of its workforce is exempted by state laws from the residency requirements. The remaining 20% are not being unlawfully discriminated against.

Well, it's a start. Now we need to go after the state to roll back the exemptions for police, fire and sanitation workers. (That last one is a doozy--it means that the trash haulers can live wherver they want, but snowplow operators must live in the city. A department divided amongst itself.)

Union folks hate residency requirements and fight it incessantly, BUT THEY MUST BE MANDATORY AND APPLY TO ALL! The city can no longer afford to pay union-scale wages and benefits to folks who do not contribute to the city's tax base. Unions must realize that they are killing the goose that lays the unionized-plenty-of-overtime- mandated-benefits eggs. The Syracuse city budget is facing a multi-million dollar deficit because it is spending twice the amount annually it brings in through tax revenue. We cannot continue a system that pays Syracuse police more overtime than Rochester and Buffalo combined. Over 30 police officers earned over $100,000 last year.

So motor on home to Clay and B'ville and Manlius, you suburban-dwellers. But don't be so sure that your city job will be awaiting you at the end of your morning commute.

More On Todd Rundgren

2006-03-19T19:15:00.000-05:00

Todd Rundgren, now with the New Cars, is more than just a great musician. For years he has been at the cutting edge of computer technology and music downloads. And not in a "Metallica-screw-the-fans" way either. For loyal fans he set up a subscription service giving fans access to not only his old music, but also works in progress.

Here's an excerpt from an essay Todd Rundgren wrote on the relationship between musicians and their audience--and how its being threatened by the "dumb asses" of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA):

"It's time to let the monolith of commoditized music collapse like the Berlin Wall. Musicians can make records if they feel like it, or not. Wide open pipes are ready to transport us, mainstream and fringe alike, into the ears of an eager audience who appreciates us and is more than willing to financially support us. Get out of the way if you can't lend a hand because ... you know the rest by heart."

Race, Class & Gerry McNamara

2006-03-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

I've held off writing about Gerry McNamara for awhile, but now that S.U's season is finished the time seems right to unload. I'm not alone in wondering why the public has gone through such a fuss about McNamara. See the poll of assistant Big East coaches naming Gerry the conference's most overrated player or this article on Slate.com linking Gerry to the legion of "AWG"'s (Annoying White Guys) that many fans love to hate.

I agree with Sean Kirst's comments in the Post Standard that the Orange run through the Big East tournament brought the entire region together. McNamara was incandescent during all four games at Madison Square Garden and all Orange fans should remember this conference championship as one of our team 's most glorious achievements.

That being said, why all the fuss about a point guard that will not go on to the NBA, was often inconsistent as a shooting guard and forced to play out of position as a point guard? His farewell Dome game against Villanova was more elaborate than the send-offs accorded much more celebrated athletes who also stayed for four years and graduated, including last year's graduating senior Hakim Warrick (you remember, the guy who saved our National Championship with THE BLOCK!).

The answer to that question is one of both race and class. The letters to the editor that talk about his being a "clean-cut, All-American guy" is a not so subtle hint about what's going on here. The overwhelmingly white fan base is hungry for a star that they can relate to, in a way that they cannot with the equally clean-cut, polite, and soft-spoken Hakim Warrick. In this town, it also certainly doesn't hurt to have an "Mc" beginning to your surname.

But McNamara is different from the legion of "AWG's" discussed in the aforementioned Slate article. The premise of that article is the the AWG's are from relatively affluent backgrounds. They are suburban types that aren't complete players, lionized in the press, but disparaged by true basketball fans as much for their cocky attitudes as for their uni-dimensional games. McNamara isn't a spoiled suburban kid, but from a blue-collar family in one of the archetypical fading rust-belt towns of America: Scranton, Pa. That plays well in a town like Syracuse. We may be larger and a bit more economically diverse than Scranton, but we're also struggling and unsure of our future. Gerry is our hometown guy by proxy, even more so than someone like Lazarus Sims, an actual hometown player.

That "New Cars" Smell--Not Bad!

2006-03-15T21:20:00.000-05:00

An interesting rock 'n'roll revival--The Cars, replacing singer/songwriter/leader Ric Ocasek with, wait for it. . . TODD RUNDGREN!Now called The New Cars, the band ripped through a nice performance on the Tonight Show of the Cars hit "Good Times Roll".

I'm very much into this development. From the Nazz to Utopia and his solo career, Rundgren is a much more accomplished writer and performer than the icy Ocasek. New album and tour in May!

Joanie Bugs Out

2006-03-15T11:55:00.000-05:00

Joanie Mahoney, the recent Republican candidate for Mayor of the City of Syracuse, has decided to move out of the city. The decision has already been framed in political terms, by both the Driscoll and Mahoney camps.:

“She wasn’t really into the election, she was a stalking horse for the Mayor’s opponents.” Vs.
“The policies of Mayor Driscoll are driving families out of the city.”

They’re both wrong. I’ve seen firsthand the effort that Ms. Mahoney put into her work as an assistant District Attorney and a Common Councilor. You cannot fake that kind of commitment to your community. However, I don’t buy the cop-out rationale that Matt Driscoll made her move out of the city. I accept Joanie’s statement that the move is for her family, they need a larger house and the Catholic school their children are all attending is closing. However, these are choices that she made and could have been made differently.

There are no larger houses in the city of Syracuse? Matt Driscoll closed down St. James? Let’s face it, the suburbs have bigger yards, bigger houses and better schools. If that’s what you want, fine. Not everyone can live in the city. At least be honest about your motivations. You want to be a suburban hausfrau.

As more well-heeled families take their tax dollars out of the city, the day will soon come when we start finding alternative means to tax those who use our city for work and recreation, without contributing to the public coffer.

Hey Joanie: don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on your way out!

If You Thought Crows Were Bad, Try Coyotes

2006-03-08T23:18:00.000-05:00

Here are some e-mails being flashed around by our neighborhood association:

“...several coyote spottings on Alden Street and behind St. Andrew's Church. This coyote seems to come out during the early morning hours and I saw him just yesterday on a neighbor's front lawn and then in the church parking lot at 5:00 p.m. when there were plenty of people and cars around.”

“I see the coyote(s) and a fox all the time in our backyard on Thurber. I chased the fox out of our yard when we got home from work at 6 pm last week “

From Vincent Street across from the park: “There have been coyotes in our back yard just a few days ago. Our cats spotted them around 9:30pm.”

“dog walker friends of mine who live in the neighborhood were walking their dogs (large dogs) on leash early in the morning and were tailed closely by a coyote for several blocks. He eventually turned into the cemetery as they were approaching my house on Jamesville Ave.”

Our 3 dogs are medium sized (40-50 lbs) and are outside in our fenced backyard as a pack, but I’m still freaked out. We don’t let them run in the back by themselves anymore, we’re hanging on the porch with our coffee in the morning and huddled in our jackets and pajamas before bedtime.

Doing some research, I came across an interesting article in the Smithsonian magazine about urban coyotes titled City Slinkers. Apparently, we are in the midst of an unprecedented coyote boom and coyotes have moved into every nook and cranny of the country--big cities and suburbs included. Coyotes thrive because they are nimble, smart and eat ANYTHING. Lots of good eatin’ in city garbage cans, bird feeders and small pets. We're not alone!

Will The Erie Canal Bring Bruce Back To Syracuse?

2006-03-07T15:50:00.000-05:00

“it’s been a long, long drought baby/but tonight the rain’s pouring down on our roof.”

First the CD version of the 1975 Hammersmith Odeon concert was released in February. Now the announcement of an April 25th release of a collection of traditional folk songs entitled We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.

The collection features Bruce’s covers of spirited, socially aware folk songs, in the vein of singer and activist Pete Seeger. The band is not the E-Streeters, although Soozie Tyrell plays fiddle and Patti Scialfa sings background harmony.

The band, playing acoustic/traditional instruments, will also go out on tour. Will Syracuse (skipped over for the last two E-Street tours and the recent Devils & Dust solo acoustic tour) see its first Bruce concert since the 1996 Ghost of Tom Joad solo acoustic tour? I’m hoping that an album that contains the song “Erie Canal” will help convince Bruce to come back to Syracuse.

This Lent, I'm Giving Up The Cynicism

2006-02-28T20:43:00.000-05:00

For years I have been telling the same lame joke around this time of year: "This year I gave up Lent for Lent." As a Protestant of the Christmas & Easter variety, the rituals most associated with Catholicism were not part of our seasonal celebrations--Give something up for Lent? Are you crazy? It's all about the new clothes for church, chocolate bunnies for the kids and a big ham feast for the adults.

A recent article pointed out how even Protestants are celebrating Easter with ashes, fasting and self-sacrifice.

The older I get, the more I find the appeal of religion is in its stark challenge to modern materialism. Our society has seemingly abandoned all good sense and devoted itself to the selfish satisfaction of buying and consuming. Concern for those less fortunate is considered to be soft-headed and a waste of time. Recognizing alternative ways of thinking and living has become more important to me, even if it means tolerating some religious trappings along with the positive philosophy. Lent certainly has that kind of appeal. Give something up for Lent. Do something personally that will be difficult or uncomfortable.

Got it. No fast food or candy for 40 days. I'll let you know how it goes.

homer

2006-02-28T01:10:00.000-05:00

Roger Clemens, tuning up for the World Baseball Classic and deciding whether or not to retire, pitched to a group of first year Astro players, including his son Koby at Houston's spring training camp. Koby smacked the first pitch from his father for a home run.

Clemens' second pitch was high and tight, forcing Koby to jump out of the batter's box.

Welcome to the majors, kid.

Aging In Place--New Thoughts On Community

2006-02-27T19:20:00.000-05:00

According to recent polls, over 80% of seniors want to remain in their homes as they age, rather than move into a nursing home. How can this be accomplished in these days of scattered nuclear families and older seniors needing more specialized care? Some interesting grassroots alternatives are developing, spearheaded by seniors with beaucoup bucks and the willingness to spend what it takes. The strategies are well worth studying in hopes of developing projects that even folks of modest means can enjoy.

On Beacon Hill in Boston, the residents of the city's toniest neighborhood have created a non-profit agency, Beacon Hill Village to assist elder residents with everything they need to stay in their homes. Many of these houses are not accessible, historic old homes where renovations are not always possible.

A member’s membership dues ($550/mo.) covers weekly trips to the supermarket, rides from volunteers, group exercise classes and lectures on topics related to aging. Other services needed by seniors, especially home repairs and home health aides, are available from a stable of service providers that offer group discounts to members. The professional staff is available 24hours a day by phone to help work out problems. The non-profit has over 300 members and is even able to partially subsidize about one-fifth of their lower-income members (although lower income in the Beacon Hill neighborhood is relative.) The group is being studied by groups across the country and will shortly be publishing a study of their group that promises to help others replicate the project.

In the slightly more crunchy-granola California town of Davis, seniors have borrowed from the theory of co-housing to develop a sort of commune for the elderly. Rich folks in this community sold their original homes, using the profits to buy a piece of land where they created a new development. The eight private homes clustered around a common center is named Glacier Circle. The common center will also house a below-market rate apartment that will be rented out to a skilled nurse to offer additional health care services.

Dr. William Thomas is known for his work to make nursing homes less institutional with his Eden Alternative. “Edenized “ facilities have on-site day care centers for workers’ kids, home-made food and other amenities that try to reduce the institutional feel of the homes. Almost 250 nursing homes across the country have adopted the Eden principles, like St. Luke’s home in Utica: “We poured in plants and animals and children . . .spiced it up with hundreds of birds and dogs and cats and children and plants and gardens, so that the environment itself felt more alive, looked more alive, sounded more alive.”

Dr. Thomas’ next project is an attempt to bypass the nursing homes entirely, by creating co-operative, inter-generational living communities called Eldershires. The first development is called Avalon and will be located just on the outskirts of Sherburne, N.Y. in Chenango County. Eldershire communities will be privately developed, but seniors and others seeking to be part of a cooperative community can buy into the development and will be trained to take over its management. The project in Sherburne has just received preliminary approval from local officials.

On Saul Alinsky, Community Organizing & Syracuse

2006-02-25T00:02:00.000-05:00

NYCO's Blog has just posted what she calls an e-reprint of some posts by Dancin' Larry entitled "Talkin' Organizin'. The posts discuss the community organizing philosophy and tactics of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky literally wrote the book on community organizing, Rules For Radicals, published a year before his death in 1973. The most comprehensive biography of Alinsky is Let Them Call Me Rebel by Sanford Horwitt, the text on which I base this post.

Alinsky created the first modern community organization, The Back of The Yards in Chicago during the 1940's. Other organizations created by Alinsky were The Woodlawn Organization in Chicago and the Community Service Organization in Los Angeles, both in the 1950's. In the 1960's Alinsky decided to concentrate on teaching others to organize, setting up the Industrial Areas Foundation, the first of what have become an integral part of community organizing--national organizing networks that help train organizers and give research and tactical support to community organizations.

Saul Alinsky worked closely with or trained some of the most important activists, writers and politicians of our time. The Back of The Yards group's success bolstered the organizing work of the nascent AFL-CIO, helping to organize the Chicago stockyards of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and supporting the efforts of John L. Lewis and Walter Reuther. The Woodlawn Organization stared down the Daley machine, organizing massive voter registration drives. TWO's leaders were at the forefront of Martin Luther King's short campaign in Chicago. Cesar Chavez was trained as an organizer by Alinsky's main assistant Fred Ross at the Community Service Organizaztion.

Even more importantly, thousands of everyday citizens have received the training and support that has allowed them to stand up and fight for their neighborhoods through community organizations that believe, like Alinsky, that democracy is for ordinary Americans.

NYCO made one point on which I would like to elaborate: "One of Alinsky's celebrated organizing victories happened vs. Kodak in Rochester during the 1960s, if you're looking for a local angle." Another local angle was Alinsky's work in Syracuse during 1965. Syracuse became a test case for the Office of Economic Opportunity (the OEO was the agency that actually fought The War On Poverty) and its philosophy of maximum feasible participation of the poor.

Alinsky was a major critic of the War On Poverty, calling it "a prize piece of political pornography." Since the beginning of his career, he had fought against social workers and other welfare workers who believed that poor people must be rescued. Alinsky always believed that poor people should be trained to fight for the power that would allow them to do for themselves. Supporters of both philosophies fought for control of the OEO.

SU professor Warren Haggstrom set up the SU Community Action Training Center with over $300,000 in federal funds under the OEO's Community Action Program. Haggstrom hired Alinsky to hold weekly seminars with students on organizing theory. Alinsky also had his chief aide Fred Ross work full-time in Syracuse, organizing students to go door-to-door surveying residents about their concerns. Interested residents hosted house meetings with their neighbors. Several adjacent blocks would knit the house parties into a neighborhood action committee. The goal was to create a neighborhood action committee in six targeted areas. Eventually the six committees would coalesce together as a powerful organization. The issues that the students and residents organized around were housing conditions, high gas bills and unfair evictions. The survey also initiated a a voter registration component "Register For Power."

The mayor at the time William Walsh (U.S. Rep. Jim Walsh's father) protested bitterly to Washington about this program, especially the voter registration drive: "These people go into a housing project and talk about setting up a 'democratic' organization--small 'd', but it sounds just the same as Democratic--big 'D', and in a close election it could be decisive." The S.U./Alinsky program was also in direct competition with another Community Action Program, the non-threatening Crusade for Opportunity. The Crusade's finances were controled by City Hall and its goal was to mobilize charitable and civic agencies to work on a case-by-case basis with poor people.

Politicians like Mayor William Walsh put pressure on Washington to eliminate programs that attempted to bypass the local power structure and directly empower grassroots residents. By the summer of 1965, Washington started easing advocates of the "maximum feasible participation of the poor" out of the agency. Syracuse, due to the outspoken nature of Alinsky's comments, became the symbol of the neutering of the OEO and its Community Action Program. The S.U. program's funding wsa not renewed after its first year and Professor Haggstrom was fired. The NY Times asked Alinsky if he was disappointed that the Syracuse program was discontinued and he sneered his reply: "Have you ever been to Syracuse?"

The fight over how best to fight poverty in Syracuse is still reflected in the groups that emerged from the two competing Community Action Programs. From the ashes of the Crusade For Opportunity has emerged
PEACE, Inc. (People's Equal Action and Community Effort, Inc. ) whose mission is detailed on their website: "As one of Central New York's largest human service agencies, P.E.A.C.E., Inc. works tirelessly throughout the city of Syracuse and surrounding areas to provide programs and services for the whole family, including child and youth services, family and community development, senior services and energy and housing services."

In 1977, the Board of Urban Ministry, a now defunct organization of inner-city Catholic churches, adopted the S.U./Alinsky template of neighborhood action committees to create a grassroots organization to fight for improved housing conditions on the city's southside. One year later, that organization was spun off as an independent non-profit agency, Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN). SUN to this day utilizes the confrontional tactics and grassroots leadership that is a hallmark of Alinsky-style organizations. Full disclosure: I am the senior staff organizer for SUN.

Free Bob Marley!

2006-02-22T16:31:00.000-05:00

This is the best article about Bob Marley I've read in a long time. As the sub-title says, he's been hijacked by stoned suburban teenagers.

"Say you're a middle-class American white kid. It's spring term freshman year, and you've just discovered pot, Bob Marley, and ultimate frisbee. You really want to drop that organic chemistry course, but you know your parents will be pissed. In such a scenario, Bob Marley's songs, with lines like 'Emancipate yourself from mental slavery' and 'No chains are on my feet/ but I am not free,' seem to be talking to you in a way that's deeply profound."

The article is a great brief primer on everything you need to know about one of the most important musical artists of the 20th century:

1) It's the early music that shines. Popular trifles like "One Love" and "Three Little Birds" are not representative of his work.

2) Bob Marley sang about resistance and revolution--topics light years to the left of even the most politically aware rocker and rapper in middle class America.

3) Bob Marley was seriously religious and his lyrics are drenched in imagery and language from the Old Testament.

For the full credit course, you must read Catch a Fire : The Life of Bob Marley by Timothy White. The biography details Bob Marley's life and is a brilliant description of his music. However, the book goes much further than standard pop star biography. White dissects the history of reggae from its earliest forebears, discusses the racial, social and political complexities of Jamaica and gives a high level tutorial on the religious beliefs that underpin all of Bob Marley's work.

I've got to go now, I've got Bob Marley Live! cued up on my iPod.

Grassroots Democracy In Bloom

2006-02-20T22:40:00.000-05:00

As a community organizer for Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN), my job is to help build a community organization with the skill, guts and determination to fight for its neighborhoods. The fight is difficult because the coin of the realm in the halls of government and the suites of the private sector is money--the one thing we do not have. Yet sometimes, despite the odds against you, everything goes right.

On Wednesday SUN learned that Rep. James T. Walsh had accepted our invitation to discuss low-income families' struggles with high heat bills. On Thursday our leadership team, four local resident volunteers, held a long meeting to prepare the agenda and rehearse their roles. On Friday we identified three additional residents that could relate their personal stories dealing with high heat bills. We felt the Congressman needed to hear about the sacrifices that families are making when they are forced to pay 2-3x's the cost of last year's heat bills--often on fixed incomes. On Saturday, everything came together.

The personal stories were heartfelt and powerful. The stories were buttressed by three additional residents. This was no bitch session--this was a chance to speak the truth to power.

SUN's leaders (leader is a term we use for the resident volunteers that take active roles in a public meeting or action) then made five specific demands of the Congressman for effective actions he could take in Washington to help families deal with heat bills:

1) Support an upcoming supplemental spending bill to add $1 billion to the HEAP and Weatherization budgets.
2) Oppose the proposed Bush cut of 20% to the Community Development Block Grant budget in FY 2007--the major source of home repair loans to families in our neighborhoods.
3) Work with SUN to eliminate a glitch in the Weatherization program that allows landlords to receive partial benefits, while denying these same partial benefits to middle income/owner-occupants.
4) Work with SUN to create a task force of residents, financial institutions, government agencies and technology experts to work toward the goal of making every home in the city weatherized and energy efficient.
5) Support a windfall profits tax on oil & natural gas companies to help pay for some of these initiatives.

Rep. Walsh unreservedly agreed to the first four demands and said he would look at the fifth seriously.

This meeting was a major accomplishment, pulled off in a very short period of time and run to perfection by the type of grassroots folks that everyone usually writes about as disaffected, alienated and out of touch with mainstream democratic institutions. This was grassroots democracy in full bloom, on a cold and blustery day in the snowiest city in America.

Hey, Welcome! Meta Content Ahead.

2006-02-15T13:33:00.000-05:00

This blog has always served as sort of my repository for thoughts that otherwise would get lost. It also allows me to occasionally think more deeply about issues that matter to me. I made the blog public so I would be forced to focus and correct the typos.

After awhile I began to wonder if anyone was reading these posts, I hardly ever have anyone leave comments (other than the online poker and discount Viagra folks.) So I got me one of them sitemeter doohickeys to get some answers.

The vast majority of visitors to this site have linked over from NYCO's Blog. This is understandable since this blog is the hub around which all the rest of the CNY blogosphere revolves--I think Baloghblog called it the "mack daddy" of local blogs. I use NYCO's Blog as my favorites list when I surf around area blogs. (It must be the great writing. Today's post on the Cheney incident summed up the entire problem with the Bush administration in about 100 words.)

My blog name brings me a lot of traffic. I get a healthy number of folks who have an interest in illegal street racing, both pro and con. They link to me from search engines, take one look at posts about rockers, Red Sox and local politics and accelerate on to the next site.

However, my blog name also gets me a lot of Springsteen fans (of which I am a diehard) but most of them seem to be ONLY interested in Bruce and stay for the requisite 1-2 seconds before they are Born to Run again. However, these fans also constitute my first foray into international waters as I have gotten several French, Spanish and English fans coming by.

I recently had my first experinece with being hyper-linked on a (Inter)national blog. My post on Bono's homily at the National Prayer Breakfast was included in a wrap-up of many such posts by a blog dedicated to the religious aspects of U2. This led to a flurry of hits and an honest to goodness comment (positive too!).

Well, back to the regular stuff next time--you know rants about the crappy state of Syracuse, review of Bruce's new release (the audio version of the 1975 Hammersmith Odeon DVD) and the exploits of the Boston Red Sox' newest star and the player with the best name in all of major league baseball--Coco Crisp!

Cielito Lindo

2006-02-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

My wife was singing a song this morning while I was in the shower, the melody was so familiar that I started to sing as well. It was then that I realized that I was singing different lyrics. My wife was singing in her native Polish and I was singing in heavily accented gringo Spanglish. After poking around a little about this song, I realize that I truly am a product of my culture--the commercial, white-bread America of the late '60's/early '70's.

The song is familiar to many for its ay, yi, yi, yi chorus. After some internet searching, I found that the song is a Mexican folk song called Cielito Lindo (Lovely Heaven). It is a love song and the chorus says: "sing, don't cry", because singing makes your heart happy.

My wife was singing a Polish version of the song, one that used the same melody, but whose lyrics talked about how World War II forced people to scrounge for basic food supplies, including their beloved kielbasa and vodka.

I realized, much to my chagrin, that I was singing the theme song to a dimly remembered commercial (1968) for Fritos corn chips, anyone else remember the Frito Bandito?

Ayiee, yie-yie-yieeee, /I am dee Frito Bandito.
I love Frito's Corn Chips/I love dem I do.
I love Frito's Corn Chips/I take dem from you.

Red Sox On The Move

2006-02-13T16:53:00.000-05:00

Red Sox On The Move
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

From today's Boston Globe comes this reminder that spring training is only days away and Opening Day is right around the corner.

Join me and other Red Sox Nation folks as we all say: Coco Crisp!!!!

Chris Whitley: "Walk it with the spirit/Talk it with the spine"

2006-02-09T00:32:00.000-05:00

While Bruce's performance on the Grammy's was inspiring, I got a shock during the roll call of those people that had passed away in the past year. Chris Whitley died in November of lung cancer at the age of 45.

My two favorite Chris Whitley Albums:

"Living With The Law" (1991):

“Chris Whitley's extraordinary debut album, is fantasy blues - bona fide poetry and National steel guitar conjuring dream imagery from some surreal western movie. Riveting and original, Whitley mines roots music not as an imitator but as a visionary who trades on archetypal symbols and classic riffs to fashion his own twilit American mythology . . .Often, a song will begin w ith Whitley singing and playing spare slide-guitar melodies; gradually, as the full band kicks in, the song mounts to an electric, drum-heavy crescendo. Chris's brother, Daniel, joins him on guitar for the feedback frenzy that climaxes "Long Way Around." On the title track and elsewhere, snare drums brushed lightly meet up with bass lines as heavy as a farmer's boots . . .there hasn't been music as wise as Whitley's in quite some time.

--Paul Evans, Rolling Stone

“Dirt Floor” (1998):

“They point to the gaunt, pale figure on the cover of the recently released Dirt Floor and assert that his is a body slowly being worn down by the music he plays, this melancholy brand of acoustic blues that drips with crucifixion imagery and dead-dog-on-the-side-of-the-road fatalism. They listen to his voice - neither from the heart nor from the gut, neither sweet nor sullen, neither white nor black - and drown in its somber hues . . .Dirt Floor, released on a tiny label run by a 24-year-old kid out of his New York apartment, is the answer to their prayers; it's the sound made when a man is dropped from his label and then goes chasing ghosts around his daddy's abandoned farmhouse in Vermont. . .It's a good record, a creepy record, a vaguely uplifting record in a wretched sort of way, and a good record for a man to tour behind, as he doesn't need anyone to play it but himself. And it doesn't sound like the blues, but you know it is anyway.”

--Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer

That such an adventurous musician (he mixed his blues with country, folk, hard rock, electronica) was not a household name is perhaps not surprising. However, we have his music. It was an unusual voice, but also unusually gifted. Listen.

Bruce Springsteen Speaks Out: "Bring 'Em Home!"

2006-02-08T23:02:00.000-05:00

At the end of his live performance tonight on the Grammy Awards of his song Devils & Dust, Bruce Springsteen shouted out: "Bring 'em home!". There was no reaction, as the audience was already applauding the performance.

"Got God on our side/We're just trying to survive
But if what you do to survive/Kills the things you love
Fear is a powerful thing/It'll turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God-filled soul/Fill it with devils and dust."

--Devils & Dust

Bono At The National Prayer Breakfast

2006-02-05T11:38:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Baloghblog, I got this link to the transcript of a speech that Bono, the lead singer for the band U2, gave at the most recentNational Prayer Breakfast. I have several reactions, both theological and political.

First, Bono has long been religious, but also a very healthy sceptic (see "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"). The major point I take away from what he calls his homily is this--religion can get in the way of God. Bono grew up in a culture that literally fought over the correct way to believe. His parents could not worship in the same church. Families were torn apart, society segregated and people died for their particular manner of worship.

It's been this kind of horseshit that has always kept me away from organized religion. The stakes aren't the same in our country, but the effect has been the same. True believers trying to limit other people's access to the divine because they don't sing the same hymns, read the same books or pray the same way. Bono speaks to those of us who have been turned off by God's followers--ignore them, find God for yourself.

Bono has found God by meeting him where he lives--with the poor: " I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill… I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff… maybe, maybe not… But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor."

Bono follows this up with a call to make your religious values real: work to end the poverty and disease that is causing 150,000 people a month to perish in Africa. The crisis in Africa is a direct challenge to our sense of ourselves as religious people, not to act is to be complicit in an order that allows people to in Africa to die from the kind of diseases and poverty that the western world has eradicated.

It's the political nature of Bono's call that has excercised some people. Ironically, Bono has gotten more criticism from the left than the right. This website's posting by several left-leaning music and pop culture critics is typical: Bono Must be Stopped. Messianic and egotistical are the ad hominem attacks. The more serious charge is that he is compromising the attack on GW Bush from the left.

My take is different. Bono admits to the ego part. In another speech Bono poked fun at that most frightening modern phenomenon: "The rock star with a cause." But is Bono playing footsie with right-wingers and hurting the cause? I don't believe so. He has decided what his goal is--eliminate suffering in Africa--he is not going to dilute his message and become a billboard for each and every cause, no matter how valid. This attack is a re-working of the right-wing ad hominem argument against activists: "If you're so concerned about peace & justice for X, why aren't you working for Y as well?" People can only do so much, especially if you want to be effective.

As for playing footsie with right-wingers, Bono uses his access to speak truth to power, in a language that his adversaries can understand. He gets to quote scripture to politicians, religious leaders and business types to ram home the point that right-wing policies do not live up to the standards of basic religious tenents. How many lefties get invited to the National Prayer Breakfast to say this to the collected conservative religious folks:

"It's not about charity, it's about justice. And that's too bad. Because you're good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can't afford it. But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment. . . Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market, that's a justice issue. Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents, that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents, that's a justice issue. And while the law is what we say it is, God is not silent on the subject."

Mad Benny's First Encyclical

2006-02-03T13:01:00.000-05:00

He spent many years as Pope John Paul II’s enforcer--the head of the Congregation Of The Doctine Of The Faith, the part of the Vatican that sniffs out apostates, disbelievers and heretics. He gave a rousing speech immediately before the Cardinals gathered to elect a new Pope on the evils of modern society’s tendency toward moral relativism (damn kids these days think that judging people is wrong, but some things are just not right dammit!) His first policy since being elected Pope is to try to root gays out of seminaries in America. He is, of course, Pope Benedict XXVI, or as I refer to him--Mad Benny.

I was born and raised an Episcopalian, but I have never been a devout churchgoer. My wife’s family is all Catholic, so if I go to any services they tend to be Catholic masses. My nuclear family has all passed away, so my in-laws are my family. They emigrated from Poland and were inspired by John Paul II. The Catholic Church kept the idea of a Polish nation alive and the Pope’s inspiration helped free millions of people from oppression. (I know, it wasn’t the same in Latin America and I’ve never understood the anti-condom thing.) This was enough to get me thinking I was a Catholic by proxy.

Mad Benny changed all that. I note to people now that I am an Episcopalian and that our church not only tolerates gays, we make them Bishops. (At least for now--we’re kind of upset about the whole thing. Many congregations have stormed out of the living room and slammed their bedroom doors behind them. But we’re WASP’s. We don’t really talk about those things. Everything’s fine. . .really.)

But now Mad Benny has thrown us a curve ball. His first major theological statement is his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love") One part “All You Need Is Love” and one part, government and politics isn’t in our job description. The encyclical is readable--well written and only about seventy pages, but I didn’t make it all the way through (American Idol was on, and I had to clean the bathroom and there’s this report due at work. . .)

God is love, there are other valid religions, work out your politics for yourself (just keep in mid a few of our teachings)--sounds like the kind of squishy thinking he’s been railing about for awhile. Sounds suspicious--Mad Benny was the guy who got the American Bishops to stop coddling pederast priests long enough to tell their parishioners that John Kerry wasn’t moral enough to be President.

However, this encyclical touches at the problems I have with both Catholicism and organized religion. 1) As an American, my first response to most people telling me what to do is “Who died and made you Pope?” 2) Why do religions fight so much over silly doctrines and who’s the one true way? Why can’t there be a multiplicity of ways? So Mad Benny is keeping the Catholics in play for me. . .at least for the moment.

On Blogging and I.F. Stone

2006-02-02T14:22:00.000-05:00

Over at NYCO's blog, there was a very interesting discussion on why so many area bloggers were focusing on local and regional issues, instead of imitating other bloggers writing (from both the right and left) on national politcal issues. My contribution to this discussion was modest, my sense that the writings of the big-time national bloggers did not have an appreciable impact on my life. I do believe that the discussions on local issues hit me where I live: economic development, history, food, community planning, environmental concerns--just to name a few.

After doing a little web surfing today, I realized what the national blogs are missing--the spirit of their intelletual forebear I.F. Stone. Stone was a reporter who never attended press briefings, didn't try to develop sources with high placed officials and for most of his career was self-published. The I.F. Stone Weekly was a broadsheet with a single writer and a circulation that topped out at 70,000. However, among his accomplishments was being the first journalist to stand up to Joe McCarthy, writing the definitive history of the Korean War and breaking the lies behind the Tonkin Gulf incident that led the US into Vietnam.

I.F. Stone disdained the "on-one-hand, this; on-the-other-hand, that" journalism that still exists today. Taking unpopular stands led him to be blacklisted and smeared as a communist. However, he despised all bullies regardless of their politics. In an interview taped during the 1970's he prophesized the crumbling of the rigid Soviet regime and in the 1980's wrote to The Nation praising their criticism of the leftist Sandinistas for crushing press and free speech freedoms in Nicaragua.

In a biographical reminiscence of Stone in The Nation, the journalist Andy Kopkind is quoted as saying that the I. F. Stone Weekly "organized the consciousness of its readers somewhat in the way a community action group organizes a neighborhood: for awareness, understanding, action." This is what I realize current political bloggers lack. There is no passion for social change and real people in their writings. Their concerns are parochial and very partisan.

I.F. Stone lived out the words of his credo: "To write the truth as I see it; to defend the weak against the strong; to fight for justice; and to seek, as best I can, to bring healing perspectives to bear on the terrible hates and fears of mankind, in the hope of someday bringing about one world, in which men will enjoy the differences of the human garden instead of killing each other over them."

Democracy At 5 P.M.

2006-01-25T19:49:00.000-05:00

Note to self: Don’t write off those little advertised and poorly attended committee meetings of the Syracuse Common Council. I attended a Public Safety committee meeting on Monday and it was incredible. Now I may be a policy nerd, but I believe that even real people would have gotten a lot out of this meeting.

Ostensibly called to see how the police department was managing its overtime budget six months into its fiscal year, the Police Chief and the Council actually discussed two of the most intractable problems facing the Syracuse Police Department: 1) How do you aggressively police high-crime neighborhoods without disrespecting innocent residents? 2) How do you diversify the police department so that the force doesn’t resemble a white, male and suburban occupying force?

The meeting morphed into a useful discussion when the Police Chief was asked about Operation Impact, a collaborative effort of the police, sheriff and state police. One aspect is an aggressive effort to pull over all drivers in high crime areas for any obvious traffic infraction. The theory is that the police will uncover other, more serious crimes. While this is true, you also run the risk of alienating law-abiding residents of these neighborhoods. Reports of overzealous and rude behavior have come out in public meetings in our Southside neighborhoods and heard by several councilors.

In their interactions, the Councilors and the police illustrated the divide that is acutely felt in our neighborhoods. The police wonder why complaints aren’t made through proper channels. Residents, seeing no results from prior complaints, wonder why they should waste their time. The police condescendingly lecture the neighborhood on what they should do, oblivious to the damage the flaws in their procedures have done to police/community relations. Residents throw up their hands and believe the worst of the police force--corruption, incompetence and racism.

The meeting featured a fired-up and angry Tom Seals, a 30-year veteran of the police department, but a man with severe doubts about the ability of the police to respectfully deal with his constituents in the largely African-American 4th District on the Southside. His performance was as surprising as it was heartening, given Councilor Seals was largely invisible during his first two years on the Council. The cops pissed off the wrong guy.

Everyone agrees that making the police department more representative of the neighborhoods they serve is the best way to improve police/community relations. Recruiting minority officers has been a priority of the past two Police Chiefs that haven't been convicted of D.W.I. However, the problem isn't getting much better. The Driscoll administration has made a big point of hiring 50 additional police officers. The two classes of police academy graduates that filled these new spots included only 5 African-Americans.

The lack of minority officers contributes to the lack of minority promotions--if you aren't in a position to take the civil service exam, how can you be promoted? The police did point out that 80% of the folks passing the written exam, failed the physical exam. Recruiting police officers from the city should not be this difficult. This is a well-paying, unionized job. The city should hire full-time support staff to assist potential recruits through the hiring process.

Syracuse needs to continue this discussion, next time in a forum where the whole community can participate.

Welcome Back Theo!

2006-01-19T23:23:00.000-05:00

Theo Epstein to rejoin Red Sox!

The man with a plan is back! Theo Epstein was the General Manager who turned the Red Sox around and put them in position to win the 2004 World Series. He's young (in his twenties), smart and committed to the new statistical and analytical approach to baseball. He walked away from his job a few months ago, the pressures of Boston and office politics getting to him. He's back!

And Bronson Arroyo re-upped for three years, against the advice of his agents, because HE LOVES PLAYING IN BOSTON!

Bring on the Yankees (even with Johhny D.) We have more pitching and defense than last year. Keep Manny happy for at least another year, stick somebody in center, convert one of the infielders to short--we're going to rock!

MLK, Jr.--The Next Generation

2006-01-18T01:19:00.000-05:00

MLK, Jr.--The Next Generation
Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun.

Happy Birthday Dr. King

2006-01-17T15:10:00.000-05:00

The celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life and work is important, but every year I wonder why the celebrations are so tepid. I can't help but have misgivings on how both our nation and the heirs to the struggle for social justice are failing to properly honor Dr. King. If we do not step up and make this holiday a worthy celebration, it will not be too long before we celebrate with King Day automobile sales.

I am more culpable for this failure than most. I make my living as a community organizer; I help people learn how to fight to improve their lives. The only thing written on my calendar for January 16th, 2006 was "holiday--day off." The United States has decided to honor a man who sacrificed his life to promote mass non-violent direct action. THIS IS OUR HOLIDAY!

Sleazy landlords, greedy businessmen, absentee politicians--all of the people who are obstacles to establishing the "beloved community"--need to tremble at the approach of the second Monday in January. Our enemies need to feel the power of mass non-violent direct action at their doorsteps. We all have seen the t-shirts with the Frederick Douglass quote: "power concedes nothing without a demand." Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't wear a t-shirt, he hit the streets. He brought with him thousands of oppressed people. We need to honor the greatest of modern organizers by putting his beliefs into practice. What better way to honor Dr. King's life and work than by organizing a protest?

Taylor Branch's editorial in the New York Times titled Globalizing King's Legacy hit on another aspect of the celebrations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day that disturbs me. Dr. King wasn't just the leader of the 1950's-60's civil rights movement, he was the most eloquent and perceptive spokeman for peace, justice and democracy of the 20th century. Dr. King spoke for all of us, he should not be relegated to one issue at one point in our country's history. His writings and speeches still speak to us today, as our nation goes down the same path of attempting to bring democracy to foreign lands by military means.

Hurrah For The Red & The Blue

2006-01-10T23:55:00.000-05:00

Thanks to CNY Ecoblog for linking to this Washington Post article that highlights the achievements of my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Penn has invested millions of dollars in its West Philadelphia neighborhood, transforming a crime-ridden and poverty stricken area.

Penn has invested heavily in affordable residential housing and education. Hundreds of faculty and students work with community groups and volunteer to help improve West Philadelphia. The university seeks to work with the people of West Philadelphia, rather than dictate development.

Penn financed the building of a public elementary school with 500 students right on the outskirts of campus. Penn's education department works on curriculum and teacher development, and the school has committed $5 million over the next 10 years to fund the school. Penn Alexander school is a PUBLIC elementary school, open to the kids of West Philadelphia.

Penn has also invested millions of dollars to rehabilitate residential housing in the neighborhood, as well as enticing over 1,000 employee families to move into West Philadelphia by offering financial assistance for mortgages.

CNY Ecoblog is hoping that Syracuse U. takes a page out of Penn's handbook and works to bridge the divide between town and gown, as evidenced by its renovation of downtown buildings and promotion of the connective corridor project. I hope that Syracuse decides to focus on developing the low-income neighborhoods south and east of its campus, rather than focusing on financing yuppie enclaves and nightlife downtown.

Stop Signs

2006-01-09T20:22:00.000-05:00

One of my earlier posts "Ladies on Lynhurst" was an attempt to explain to some of my acquaintances why I work in a low-income neighborhood as a community organizer. This much earlier piece, that I have edited for this blog, is a more comprehensive attempt to explain why I do what I do.

I work as a community organizer for Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN), a small, grassroots neighborhood organization in Central New York. Recently, while interviewing potential new hires, an applicant asked me why I had become an organizer.

I realized that it must be something other than the obvious reasons of long hours, low pay and stress out the wazoo, of course. I was at a loss, never having really stopped to think about what being a community organizer meant. I have tried to explain to my friends and relatives what I do for a living, never achieving this feat in under 30 minutes. Why do I have to figure this out? At the risk of sounding like a Springsteen rock 'n' roller trying to preach to Outkast hip-hoppers, if I can explain what organizing means to me, perhaps some young person will decide to give organizing a chance.

Most organizers care deeply about social justice. We are in this racket to change the world. However, all this passion and fire sometimes gets funneled into a fight for a corner stop sign. Not very exciting, you say? A good organizer will remember the whole campaign every time she stops at the sign. Canvassing the neighborhood, helping neighborhood leaders prepare
their statements, the public meeting with a government official, theshowdown if the official says no--maybe even a protest! That will be the best damn stop sign in the city.

I used to commute to another job, driving through the neighborhood in which I now organize. There is a stop sign at the corner of Cannon St. and W. Brighton Ave. that I passed twice a day. What did I see from the safety of my locked car? Some of the worst drug dealing in the city, gang graffiti and lots of vacant houses. That's usually all anyone learns about this
neighborhood. As an organizer, I have been more fortunate than the commuters. I've had the opportunity to meet the people who live on these streets. Carolyn, a woman who raised four children while she was working full-time and who is now raising several more foster children while in retirement. George, who has lived in the same house on W. Newell for over 70 years. Jimmie, who volunteers at the local high school. These are just a few of the people I have met while working in this vibrant neighborhood.

Even more importantly, I've been able to see neighborhood residents become neighborhood leaders, fighting to improve their streets and their community. It is hard work. Long meetings to discuss strategy and rehearse leaders’ roles. Public meetings designed to hold politicians, bankers and non-profit agencies accountable to the people. Protests at the homes and offices of those that refuse to work with us. More meetings to work out details when we finally win an agreement.

The long hours have resulted in some mighty victories. SUN won a ten-year battle to force the city to reform its discriminatory property tax assessment system. The city built a new Fire Station #6 on the city’s near-westside, after SUN refused to listen to a Mayor who declared a new station was “a luxury we can’t afford.” SUN leaders putting pressure on
City Hall has resulted in laws dealing with abandoned cars, drug houses and city business licenses for corner stores and bars. Syracuse United Neighbors v. City of Syracuse is even cited as legal precedent under New York State’s Open Meetings Law, the result of our successful lawsuit to drag the city’s Common Council out from behind its closed doors.

What about the neighborhood with the stop sign that once interrupted my commute? SUN leaders convinced the city to buy the vacant Enrico's restaurant at W. Newell and Midland Ave., avoiding a sale of the building to a bar owner. The site was sold to a housing non-profit and now boasts four, new single-family homes. On the corner adjacent to the stop sign, SUN
leaders convinced the city to build a playground on what was a vacant lot. I found out shortly after starting at SUN that the stop sign exists because of a SUN victory several years earlier. SUN leaders brought the city's district councilor out to the site, showed him the dangerous corner and won the stop sign.

That same councilor is now our U.S. Congressman and he helped secure $2 million in federal funding for helping families repair their homes in our neighborhood with the street sign. I guess that’s what being a community organizer is all about--not stopping at just the sign.

Emergency Room Blues

2006-01-04T01:44:00.000-05:00

My 89 year-old Babcia (Polish grandmother-in-law) spent nearly 11 hours in the Crouse Hospital emergency room today due to the ill-effects from a case of shingles she has been fighting for the past couple of weeks. She spent 7 and 1/2 hours lying on a rolling bed in a hallway, where she had blood samples taken and once was wheeled away for about five minutes to receive a CAT scan. She then spent another 3 hours in a treatment room where she was finally examined by a doctor and admitted to the hospital.

My mother-in-law was with Babcia for the entire ordeal, the rest of the family was there for 6 hours. One of my New Year's resolutions is to more frequently ask myself the question: What did I take away from this experience?

1) Health care professionals work their asses off. Whirring around in constant motion; nurses, doctors, orderlies and medical technicians deal with scared and emotional people in a professional and caring manner.

2) Why does it take almost half a day to perform a CAT scan, a spinal tap and draw blood? The time to actually perform all the procedures didn't exceed 20 minutes.

3) If Syracuse is actually faced with a real emergency situation (heaven forbid a plane crash at Hancock, an accident at the nuke plants or some natural disaster) the capacity of our medical facilities will be snapped like a twig.

The Ladies on Lynhurst

2006-01-03T10:10:00.000-05:00

One of the big tasks at my job during the month of December is helping homeowners file their applications for property tax exemptions. Senior citizens and folks with disabilities can get up to a 50% break on their tax bills, depending on their income. This is a sad year, the first time since starting at my job that I will not visit the Ladies on Lynhurst.

Stella lived at the top of the block, near S. Salina. Cora lived at the dead end of the street. They were so different, they were so similar. They both passed away recently and I will miss them both.

Stella was born near Niagara Falls, but moved to Poland with her parents when she was three. She hightailed it back to the States as soon as she hit eighteen. When I met her, she was widowed and retired from the last of many jobs that she held in her life, working at the cafeteria up at Syracuse U. Her husband had been very sick during the final years of his life. She had two sons, both of whom work outside Syracuse. She had a 2 family home, half of which hadn't been rented out in decades.

Like many seniors, she had the television on all the time for company. Unlike many seniors, Stella tuned into C-SPAN and CNN. Stella was a devout Democrat and wondered aloud why people persecuted Bill Clinton and why Republicans didn't care about working folks. Her house was neat as a pin, despite the fact that she seemingly saved every utility bill, letter and receipt she ever came across. All of them were neatly stacked, kept in date order and kept together with rubber bands. Stella saved some amazing things. I was particularly intrigued by her pay stubs from Lipe-Rollway Bearings during WWII. She worked in the factory when it shifted from gear shifts for cars to bomber parts for war production.

Cora was born into a sharecropping family in Florida. Her parents both died when she was young and she was raised by her grandmother, a woman who was apparently quite strict and not shy about using a switch for discipline. She came to Syracuse in the great diaspora of African-Americans from the South in the 1950's, lured by the plentiful jobs in the North. Cora worked several jobs during her lifetime, often two at a time. She worked in hospitals and as a domestic for rich families in the suburbs. When I met her she was recuperating from knee replacement surgery and in terrible pain. She finally had a second procedure and ended an entire year of agony.

Cora's home was also scrupulously clean, but overflowing with lamps, china, glassware and other houseware. She had several more households neatly packed into her basement. Many of the pieces had been given to her by the various families she had worked for as a domestic. Cora also had one of the largest gardens in Syracuse, an entire building lot next to her house, right at the end of the dead-end street. She always said that Mayor Lee Alexander promised her she could keep the lot, as long as she would take care of it and plant her garden.

Two woman, both of whom who lived into their eighties. One African-American, one Polish-American. Cora and Stella lived on the same one-block dead end street for over 30 years, most of that time living alone in houses filled with memories. The only reason they ever met was because they both belonged to our neighborhood organization. When they were younger, both of them would come out to public meetings. I even saw a picture of Cora at one of our protests in the early 1980's, looking really sharp in a wide-brimmed hat. At the end of their lives, I was their only common connection. Neither woman got out much, so they both asked me how the older woman at the other end of the street was doing.

Embedded Wealth And The New Suburb

2006-01-02T19:13:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has another great article in its seemingly unplanned series on how wealth and the housing market in NYC are creating new types of suburbs.

"At 150 Edgars Ave, Changing The Idea Of Home", tracks the ownership of a house in Hastings-On-Hudson, NY since its construction in 1925. The house was built for $10,000 by the original owner (about $111,000 in current inflation-adjusted dollars). It sold for $890,000 in 2002 to the current owner. The article describes how the astronomical increase in home prices has effected how families view their homes and the changes this imposes on towns.

The outrageous costs of NYC real estate has created more homogeneous communities. Even in suburbs like Hastings, where there was once a significant blue-collar and ethnic population, that feeling of diversity has become more "a feeling than a reality." With average home prices topping $750,000, families will be restricted to the Wall Street types that have been the two most recent owners of this property, rather than the school teachers, small business owner and New York City municipal employee that had owned the home in prior years.

The article uses the term "embedded wealth" to describe what has become a huge investment, not just a place to roll out the futon, hang a couple of pictures and put on the tea kettle. The massive amount of money invested in these homes has led to a surge in home improvement work. Why? According to the article: "many home owners, the Hirschfelds among them, insist that quite apart from status and comfort, what was once mainly a dwelling in a compatible suburb now assumes even greater personal importance in an age when families increasingly focus on themselves."

That is the concern that I have always had about suburbs, probably at the core of my back-and-forth blogging with NYCO and Balogh on neighborhoods last month: they are a place for rich folks to cocoon and forget about the rest of us. As Balogh pointed out as well, the trend of building all of your entertainment and socializing into your own home has a chilling effect on public services and the livability of communities.

Syracuse Sucked In The 1950's

2005-12-27T16:02:00.000-05:00

Today's Dick Case column in the Post Standard has some follow up about Syracuse's connections to Sen. Joe McCarthy. The second part of his multi-topic column details Syracuse's part in the Red Scare witchhunts:

1) The Post-Standard caved in and published a retraction to an anti-McCarthy piece that ran in the paper.

2) McCarthy's local lawyer in his actions against the newspaper was an ex-mayor of Syracuse,

3) The target of Texas folk-hero John Henry Faulk's lawsuit for redbaiting slander was a prominent Syracuse businessman.

Add to all this the virulent racism of Syracuse sports fans of that era, such as the Chief's ugly trash talking of Jackie Robinson and the brutal atmosphere at the NBA's Nats games and the conclusion is inescapable:

Syracuse sucked in the 1950's!

The Perfect Holiday Movie--Millions.

2005-12-26T17:01:00.000-05:00

Millions. Go rent it now.

It was an impulse pick-up at Blockbuster as they were all out of the movies we had originally wanted. I looked at the cover, saw that the director Danny Boyle had also directed Trainspotting, and figured it couldn't be all that bad. I believe I have discovered the movie I will be watching for many holiday seasons to come.

1) The movie has the same visual quirks that made Trainspotting so amazing, this isn't a movie-of-the-week with a bigger budget.

2) Set during the holidays, but also a fictional future time period just before Britain converts its currency to the Euro. People have to convert their money or watch it become worthless overnight. A young boy happens upon a huge stash of currency--225,000 of soon to be extinct pounds. The young boy believes the money comes from God ("who else has so much money?") and wants to give it to the poor. His slightly older brother has more materialistic yearnings.

3) The movie has everything you'd want in a thoughtful holiday movie--the allure of the consumer culture, the existence of spiritual and material poverty, the power of familial love--but it's not sappy or preachy.

Wow--even on DVD this is a great movie. I wish I'd seen it on the big screen.

Shaking Off the Rust, New Suburbs Are Born

2005-12-26T16:14:00.000-05:00

Interesting piece in the New York Times on NYC's newest bedroom community: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It seems that the Lehigh Valley area has become the hottest market for middle class families in New York that are priced out of the real estate market in the city and traditional Long Island/Ct. suburbs.

"America's newest suburbs are neither the classic towns close to a major city, nor are they distant exurbs built on once-empty farmland. They are aging industrial cities and their environs, on the far periphery of the most expensive metropolitan areas in the northeast and California - places where middle-class parents can still buy homes for their growing families while keeping their big city jobs."

Again, one of the biggest factors (aside from the desire for large McMansions) is the school districts. The houses in the traditional NY suburbs with good public schools are too expensive and the tuition costs for private schools in the city make the cheaper housing costs of even outlying boroughs prohibitive.

This tale comes on the heels of a story last year about attempts to market homes in the Poconos to even lower income New Yorkers (and the huge increase in foreclosures due to fraud on the part of homebuilders and appraisers.)

The cost? Four hours of round-trip commuting; churches, little leagues etc. have a dearth of volunteers because of the punishing work hours of parents, locals being priced out of the housing market by influx of New Yorkers, the yuppification of the town to cater to the tastes of the new residents.

Why C.N.Y. ?

2005-12-24T01:49:00.000-05:00

Like a lot of local area bloggers, I have caught the York Staters buzz after several links from NYCO. The writing is amazing and I never fail to take some nugget of wisdom away from their writings. What strikes me the most is the palpable sense of place (and pride in that place) in their writing.

A recent article that the Yorkers link to and comment on is an article from an Elmira journalist on "75 reasons why one lifelong resident wouldn't live anywhere else ".

Like some others, it got me thinking about my own list. I guess it’s in the air this time of year--taking stock of your life and being grateful for the blessings. I tend to be a glass half-empty kind of guy (even worse, I like to throw down and debate why the powers-that-be have actually created the water shortage and are exploiting the increasingly thirsty proletariat!).

But this time I’m going to take a shot at the hopeful side of this theme. I need hopeful this holiday season. Like the writer from Elmira, I love this place because this is where I grew up, where my parents are buried and where I met and fell in love with my wife. It is my home.

Why C.N.Y.? :

1) Walking the trails around Green Lake and Round Lake on a crisp fall day. The color of the water rivals that of the leaves.

2) Syracuse has several restaurants that rival anything I’ve been to in big cities like NY and Chicago: Dinosaur, Eva’s, Munjed’s, Alto Cinco, Heid’s (my old college roommates’ first request whenever he visits).

3) The poppy seed strudel at Harrison Bakery, my reward for sitting through the Polish language mass with my wife and her grandmother at Sacred Heart across the street. The only word I know is amen!

4) Living in one of the lacrosse capitals of the world. Great games from grade school through college.

5) The memories I have of The Works, The Kingsnakes, Little Georgie & The Shuffling Hungarians and Too Hectic are being replicated RIGHT NOW by some younger kid, about some band I’ve never heard of, in some bar I’ve never been to.

6) So much great swimming that my skin is pruning up as I type this--the diving boards at Green Lakes, the frigid cold of Cayuga Lake, sneaking our dogs onto the far end of Southwick Beach on Lake Ontario, lap swimming in the early morning at Thorden Park pool in the summer, walking our dogs up the water trail to the falls at Taughannock.

7) The church of democracy--the benches that look just like pews in the Common Council chambers of City Hall.

8) I live in a conservative, Republican town--a town with scores of progressive groups and people fighting for peace, justice and freedom.

9) The Post Standard newspaper. Honest, look at some of the supermarket circulars masquerading as papers in other upstate cities.

10) Feeding the ducks at Webster Pond on a warm summer night while enjoying a Gannon’s ice cream cone.

11) Walking our dogs up the hill of the Jewish cemetery off Jamesville Ave. for the view of the city and Onondaga Lake.

12) Walking our dogs around the trails in Barry Park formed by the natural stormwater retaining basin. On Sundays you can bike around the park with no car traffic.

13) Lunch at The Welcome Inn, across the street from Skiddy Park. Ukrainian pyrohy, holubchi and borscht in the back room behind the bar.

14) Our community group’s annual picnic at the pavilion overlooking the gazebo and pond in Upper Onondaga Park.

15) My CNY senses: The smell of burning leaves in fall, the sight of a full house at the Carrier Dome, the sound of absolute silence on an early morning after a lake effect snowstorm, the taste of a sausage sandwich at the State Fair, the feel of the sun on my face during a summer afternoon on the beach at Lake Ontario.